Becoming a Culturally Responsive Special Educator Amidst School/University Partnerships: Teaching and Learning in Boundary-Zone Activity

Abstract

This study presents an activity theory analysis of how special educators learn about culturally responsive practices amidst school–university partnerships. Particular attention was paid to how culturally responsive pedagogy was privileged and appropriated by an in-service and a pre-service teacher in a boundary-zone activity. Findings demonstrate how culturally responsive pedagogy was appropriated in light of previous pedagogical artifacts that preexisted in the activity system of the classroom and as a result it became a covert form of instructionism

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I acknowledge the support of the American Educational Research Association's Minority Dissertation Fellowship, the Office of Special Education Programs leadership grant #AXS0038, the support of the Urban Professional Learning Schools Initiative under the Office of Special Education Program grant #H325T070009, and the support of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Funding agency endorsement of the ideas expressed in this article should not be inferred. Support from members of the research team including Elizabeth B, Kozleski, Laura Atkinson, Taucia Gonzales, and Lisa Lacy is acknowledged. I thank Alfredo J. Artiles, the junior faculty writing group at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the reviewers of MCA for their feedback on this article.

Notes

¹I consider students from Latin American, Mexican American, and Native American backgrounds a “minority group” because most of them occupy a “subordinate position in a multiethnic society, suffering from the disabilities of prejudice and discrimination, and maintaining a separate group identity. Even though individual members of the group may improve their social status, the group itself remains in a subordinate position in terms of its power to shape the dominant value system of the society or to share fully in its rewards” (Gibson, 1991, p. 358).