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7/31/2019 An Alternative Model of Special Education
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attitudes, the interests, skills and knowledge—in
short the culture—current in groups to which they
are or seek to become a member’’ (Merton, Reader,
& Kendall, 1957). University programs seek to
socialize new credential candidates into the norms
and values of the program. Defining elements of socialization include shared professional values, a
specific technical language and a shared vocabulary
and preference for particular pedagogic practices.
Credential programs also socialize candidates for
the role of ‘teacher’—a role that has specific
expectations and relationships with others in an
educational setting. Traditional credential programs
expect difficulty in helping credential candidates
learn to teach differently from how they were
taught. Programs also expect candidates to struggle
with norms and values learned at the university
when they enter the reality of teaching in schools.What happens though, when programs are forced to
contend with credential candidates who come to
them with prior knowledge and workplace knowl-
edge already in place? Do university teacher
education programs have any hope of socializing
credential candidates into the role of ‘teacher’ in the
way programs anticipate?
This paper is an attempt to sort out a variation of
teacher socialization, one that reworks the chronol-
ogy of socializing forces. Traditionally, special
education credential programs in the USA reliedon students who enter teacher education with their
own experiences as students, but programs did not
have to contend with their experiences as teachers as
well. Credential programs could at least try to
socialize candidates to the values, skill and knowl-
edge about what it means to be a teacher before
people actually became teachers. In this paper, I will
explore the outcomes of California University’s2
attempt to socialize their moderate/severe3 special
education credential candidates into a particular
stance on teaching special education—that of
inclusion4 —while the candidates already hold
full-time teaching positions.
2. Conceptual framework
This paper proposes an alternative model of special
education teacher education socialization. The cre-dential candidates in this study not only have
preexisting beliefs developed from their own school-
ing experiences as students, but also have beliefs that
have been further clarified, supported, and challenged
through experiences as teachers prior to entering a
teacher education program. Those beliefs continue to
be clarified, supported and challenged during the
program, which complicates existing theories on
organizational socialization (as shown in Fig. 1).
In order to theorize about the possibilities of an
alternative path to workplace socialization, we mustunderstand (1) workplace socialization, (2) teacher
education in the context of socialization into
teaching and (3) the particularities of special
education socialization.
Literature on workplace socialization in these
different contexts will help explain how the mechanisms
used to socialize do not always lead to the intended
outcomes of socialization. In this case, a cohort of
fulltime teachers, who are also credential candidates in
a program that focuses on inclusion, undergo identical
socialization processes (like coursework and classroom
observations) but leave the program with full, selective
or rejected socialization about inclusive education. This
is due, in large part, to simultaneous and ongoing
socialization by the workplace and the university,
meaning that they do not experience a linear socializa-
tion process (as shown in Fig. 2).
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Prior
Beliefs
Workplace
Socialization
University
Socialization
Fig. 1. Traditional workplace socialization.
Prior Beliefs
WorkplaceSocialization
UniversitySocialization
Fig. 2. Alternative workplace socialization.
2This is a pseudonym for a Northern California university.3The disability category Moderate/Severe indicates the type of
disabilities experienced by students that a teacher is qualified to
teach. Moderate to Severe disabilities include: ‘‘autism, cognitive
impairment, deaf-blindness, emotional disturbance, and multiple
disabilities’’ (CTC, 2007).4ythe provision of services to students with disabilities, including
those with severe impairments, in the neighborhood school, in age-
appropriate general education classes, with the necessary support
services and supplementary aids (for the child and the teacher) both
( footnote continued )
to assure the child’s success—academic, behavioral and social—
and to prepare the child to participate as a full and contributing
member of society (Lipsky & Gartner, 1996).
K. Young / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 901–914902
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2.1. Workplaces socialize for skills and knowledge
Workplaces socialize people into the ways of a
specific organization. Building on research about
organizational characteristics of work developed in
the 1950s and 1960s (Blau & Duncan, 1967; Blau &Scott, 1962; Gross, 1958; Merton, Reader, &
Kendall, 1957), Van Maanen and Schein (1979) laid
out a theory of organizational socialization. They
define it as ‘‘the process by which an individual
acquires the social knowledge and skills necessary to
assume an organizational role’’ (p. 211). Their theory
focuses on structural aspects of the organization that
precipitate the need for socialization, usually at
boundary passages: entry into or out of the
organization and lateral or vertical movement within
the organization. Individuals new to the organization
will respond to the socialization in one of three ways:they will accept the organizational rules at face value;
they will innovate and change the knowledge to
make it more efficient for themselves; or they will
reject it and redefine the values of the organization to
suit their personal needs.
Like other organizations, schools socialize new
teachers to the ways and values of the school. The
culture of a school encompasses norms and values
and routines shared by the school personnel that
lead to specific ways of working (Nias, 1989). New
teachers are socialized into a workplace whereteachers expect students to be sorted and divided
by a variety of categories—including age, ability,
race, and gender. Norms and values within a school
are influenced by broader institutional and societal
norms and values about children, education, dis-
ability, and many other ideas (Levine-Rasky, 1998).
Moves to disrupt these categories have been resisted
throughout the American educational history.5 The
school socialization process helps maintain these
categories. New teachers are also socialized into the
occupation of being a teacher in a particular school
with a particular way of thinking about children.
Novices often acquire the characteristics of teaching
by becoming like their veteran colleagues who often
hold a conservative view of student difference
(Menter, 1989; Waller, 1932).
Another explanation emerges from Lortie’s
(1975) work on teacher socialization; he documents
that new teachers bring a long history of experience
to their credential programs (see also Clandinin,
1986; Goodson, 1992; Knowles, 1992). Their
experience comes from having spent 12 years in
classrooms watching their teachers, gaining an
‘apprenticeship of observation.’ Kagan (1992) un-dertook a systematic literature review of learning-
to-teach literature and found across 27 empirical
studies information pertaining to the role of
preexisting beliefs. Each study documented the
‘‘stability and inflexibility’’ of prior beliefs and
documented the important role played by these
beliefs to filter the content of coursework.
Individual teachers also have an impact on their
own socialization as they interact with their work-
places, the university, professors and each other.
Lacey (1977), in The Socialization of Teachers,
observed three successive years of a 1-year educa-tion program in the United Kingdom. His findings
indicate that new teachers use social strategies to
comply, adjust or redefine the given situations.6
Instead of empty vessels accepting the program’s
values without question, Lacey shows how these
teachers take the concepts they are socialized into
and transform them in some way. Zeichner and
Tabachnick (1985) extend Lacey’s work by follow-
ing new teachers through credential programs into
schools and document how new teachers redefine
their workplaces. They found that workplaceculture is an important variable that determines, in
part, how new teachers will reinterpret the socializa-
tion process from their university program. Day
(1999) demonstrates how new teachers struggle to
match their personal visions of classrooms with
‘‘powerful socializing forces of school culture.’’
Olsen (2002) researched the experiences of student
teachers at four different universities. He found that
the teachers, whom he followed for 2 years, were
more likely to incorporate something learned in
their credential program if it already fit with their
personal understanding of teaching. Feiman-
Nemser (2001) indicates that new teachers must
combine their past understandings and experiences
with their own experiences in teacher education to
develop in this field.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
5For a more detailed look at schools as sorters of children and
resistance to change the system, see Bowles & Gintis, 1976;
Lacey, 1977; Lortie, 1975; Tyack, 1974; Waller, 1932; Winzer,
1993)
6Social strategies likely to be adopted are strategic redefinition,
strategic compliance or internalized adjustment. (These last two
strategies map onto Becker’s, (1961) situational adjustment.
Strategic compliance (p. 72) individual complies with authority’s
definition of the situation and the constraints of the situation but
retains private constraints about them. Internalized adjustment
(p. 72) individual complies with constraints.)
K. Young / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 901–914 903
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Structures embedded in the context of teaching
and personal agency help explain differential
socialization outcomes of credential candidates.
Some are more influenced by their workplaces while
others fall back on their personal experiences to
guide them in their development as new teachers.When skills and knowledge learned at California
University are consistent with factors found in the
structures of teaching and personal experience, we
would expect more complete socialization. For
those credential candidates whose workplaces and
personal experiences differ from university sociali-
zation, we would expect modification or rejection of
that socialization.
2.2. Weak socialization in teacher education
Researchers have also studied work place socia-lization in the context of teacher education. Teacher
education is the main formal context where
credential candidates are socialized into teaching
and becoming a teacher. Johnston and Wetherill
(2002) identify three types of program-based socia-
lization: into the discipline—such as science, mathe-
matics, or special education; into the profession of
teaching; and into the specific schools in which new
teachers will work. They state that socialization into
the discipline might be weak because of the
routinized nature of taking classes and (implicitly)not valuing the knowledge learned at the university.
Zeichner and Gore (1990) explain that teachers are
socialized into the profession through their prior
experiences and beliefs, the nature and philosophy
of their teacher education program, and the culture
of the school at which they teach. Zeichner and
Gore contend that the default conditions of
socialization are apprenticeship and school culture,
not pre-service teacher education.
In the case of California University, the default
conditions, as expressed by Zeichner and Gore,
might trump any effects of teacher education
because those stronger socialization forces outside
of the program exist concurrently with internal
programmatic attempts to socialize to inclusion—
perhaps creating a washout effect of the university’s
processes—leading to outcomes that do not support
the idea of inclusion as the university had hoped.
2.3. Stronger socialization in special education?
Special education teacher education socialization
might be different than Lortie, Lacey and Zeichner
purport for general education teachers. The role of
the program’s socialization may be greater than in
general education settings because students did not
learn about special education through experiencing
it. The university program may be a place where
teacher education has more power to socialize itsnew recruits. Inclusion as a program philosophy
may be a case in point of how teachers can learn
new concepts in a credential program and incorpo-
rate those into their schools. Pugach (1992), in a
review of teacher socialization literature, argues that
special education has stronger socialization pro-
cesses than general education teacher education
programs. It has a strong foundation grounded in
laws and regulations that are backed by legal
authority rather than a foundation in a disciplinary
focus. This means that special education has a
strong technical language that might lead to out-comes of increased socialization to the field. Pugach
explains that pre-service special educators have an
‘‘absence of an apprenticeship’’ because they did not
spend 12 years in special education classrooms or, in
most cases, 12 years learning about inclusion. She
theorizes that a lack of prior apprenticeship might
allow special education credential programs to
focus on new pedagogy rather than spending time
dispelling old beliefs. Pugach’s theory applies to pre-
service special education credential candidates.
Given that the teachers in this study come to theircredential program already having experiences as
teachers—already having had time to adopt, adapt,
or reject beliefs about special education and students
receiving special education services—will their teach-
ing experience offset the programmatic processes? If
their workplace experiences are congruent with what
the university is teaching, will they embrace Califor-
nia University’s philosophy of inclusion?
This review of socialization in the general work-
place to that of special education teacher education
has shown the factors required to socialize people into
organizations. Organizations try to socialize indivi-
duals to acquire the values and attitudes, the interests,
skills and knowledge desired by the organization.
California University provides course work, profes-
sional expertise, classroom observations and student
teaching requirements to create knowledge about and
attitudes towards inclusion. Credential candidates
adapt, adopt, or reject the socialization process of
California University based on mediating factors like
their own schooling experiences and their current
workplace experience. Based on these mediating
factors, credential candidates will be completed or
ARTICLE IN PRESS
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selectively socialized by the university, or may reject it
outright (as shown in Fig. 3).
In the special case of special teacher education at
California University, credential candidates con-
stantly renegotiate socialization from the university
because the processes and outcomes are continuous
and simultaneous for this group of teachers. The
findings from examining this alternate form of socialization will be discussed later in the paper.
3. Methods
This paper indicates findings from part of a larger
study of four pre-service special education teacher
preparation programs investigating attitudes of pre-
service special education teachers toward disability.
In particular, this paper will explore the outcomes
of California University’s attempt to socialize
moderate/severe credential candidates to the skills,knowledge and attitudes about including students
receiving special education services into general
education classrooms. This university program was
chosen over the other three programs for several
reasons: all credential candidates were in their last
semester of a 2-year credential program and all
credential candidates had already completed the
majority of coursework offered by their program.
Second, this program has an explicit focus on one
core concept—that of inclusion—as the dominant
philosophy of their program. Other programs in this
study had several themes, or no coherent theme,
that informed the coursework and provided less
clear or non-existent examples of institutional
socialization. Third, this program was the only
one where all credential candidates were also
teachers. In each of the other programs, some
people were traditional student teachers while
others were already in classrooms.
Though the sample size is small, this program
provides a version of the ‘‘critical case’’ of case
study, which is often used in theory building (Yin,
2003, p. 40). The theoretical work of this paper
explains these processes and outcomes for teachers
who are both credential candidates and full time
teachers in a program with a unified mission—
California University was the only program that fit
these parameters, and thus provides an excellent
example for theoretical exploration.
The pre-service teachers discussed in this paper
are all a part of a moderate/severe special educationteacher credential program in Northern California.
There are nine people in the program; I interviewed
seven of them in the fall of 2004. The two remaining
people chose not to be interviewed. All nine are
currently teaching on emergency credentials.
These teachers are not newcomers to the class-
room. Each of these teachers come to the program
having taught children with moderate/severe dis-
abilities from 6 months to more than 2 years and all
of them have been teaching or working as para-
professionals in classrooms for at least 3 years.7
They enter the program as fully functioning teachers
and having ideas of how well inclusion works in
their schools. Their ages range from 24 to 60. Five
are Caucasian American, one person is Asian
American and the other person refused to state
race. Six women and one man participated in the
interviews. Four of the teachers indicated that they
were inclusion teachers, one is an itinerant teacher,8
one is a special day class teacher,9 and one teacher
works in a county class at a public school site.10
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Outcomes of socialization at
California University
Complete socialization
Selective socialization
Rejected socialization
Mediatingfactors:
Prior experience
Workplaceexperience
Processes of socializationat California University
Course work
Observations
Student teaching
Fig. 3. Relationship of mediating factors to socialization processes and outcomes.
7Classroom teaching aides.8Itinerant means that she travels from school to school with
several students on her case load at each school.9Special day class (SDC) means that she has students in her
class all day long. Students in a special day setting spend more
than 60% of their time with the same teacher, separate from other
peers at their grade level.10County classes are a separate setting, usually separate
campuses from general schooling. In this case, the teacher’s
classroom resides on the property of a public school, but he
works for the county, not the district. The public school does not
have to share resources with county schools. In this case, the
teacher does interact with other teachers and students at the
school.
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Though all of these teachers are finishing the
program at the same time, they bring unique
backgrounds and work experiences with them as
they attend classes, complete credential require-
ments and continue to teach.
Each candidate was interviewed at a time andplace of their choosing, using a semi-structured
interview protocol. The interview protocol, created
though an iterative process of consulting literature
and credential candidates in a pilot study, consisted
of questions designed to elicit conversation about
what credential students learned and hoped to learn
in their credential programs, about their childhood
experiences with people with disabilities, and about
who they teach now or will teach in the near future.
I did not ask people about inclusion, and instead
pursued a line of questioning about inclusion only if
raised by participants (see the Appendix for acopy of the interview protocol). Each interview
lasted 45–90 min, was digitally audio-taped and
transcribed. After the interview data had been
collected and transcribed, I used a grounded theory
approach, letting themes in the text ‘‘rise to the
surface’’ (Strauss, 1987). I created a coding glossary
based on socialization literature and codes that
emerged emically from the data for each theme
in order to differentiate among the themes (Mac-
Queen, McLellan, Kay, & Milstein, 1998). Using
NUDIST, a qualitative software program, I codedthe documents using the glossary and shared the
codes and glossary with colleagues to check for
reliability. The reliability rate was .85 across three
interviews. I applied a horizontal analysis (cross-
case analysis) to the data (Miles & Huberman, 1994)
using ‘constant comparative analysis’ (Glaser &
Strauss, 1967) to look for common patterns as well
as differences across data sources. This process was
undertaken iteratively and adjustments in the
coding process were made. Though differences
appeared, using this method an overwhelming
adherence to shared use of the term inclusion
emerged, as well as other factors related to
professional socialization. It was only upon further
analysis that inclusion split into several codes
indicating degrees of adherence to inclusion. The
recurrent theme of inclusion will be discussed in
Section 3.1.
3.1. The case of inclusion
California University’s moderate/severe special
education credential program takes roughly 2 years
to complete, and provides new teachers with a
preliminary credential to teach special education in
California.11 The program promotes inclusion, an
influence that affects coursework and practicum
experiences. Each semester, credential candidates
participate in student teaching practica. During thefirst year, candidates are placed in their own
classroom (if they are inclusion teachers) or travel
to an inclusion site once a week for their place-
ment.12 During the second year, credential candi-
dates are required to increase the amount of time
their students with disabilities spend included with
other students at the school. If a student only
spends 5 h a week with general education students at
the start of the school year, she then must spend 7 h
a week the following month, and more time the
month after that. It is up to the credential candidate
to negotiate access into general education settingsfor each student with whom she works. Candidates
use strategies like teaching disability awareness
classes at their schools, approaching teachers one-
on-one, and asking the principal to provide help
encouraging other teachers to let students with
disabilities into their class. The majority of instruc-
tion at California University provides examples of
students with disabilities in inclusive settings—
leaving candidates who work in other settings to
adapt the examples to their own work experiences.
Credential candidates become well versed in theuniversity expectations and must adhere to these
expectations to obtain their credentials.
California University’s commitment to the values
and practices associated with inclusion are evi-
denced in their program’s expectations and in
interviews I conducted with credential candidates.
In interviews I sought to find out what message
credential candidates felt they were receiving from
the faculty. I asked each candidate, ‘‘If I was a
prospective student at California University, and
asked you about the program, what would you tell
me?’’ Though the candidates spoke about their
program and their professors, the only topic that
everyone mentioned was inclusion, and many spoke
about it at length. In a content analysis of the
interview data, inclusion was discussed an average
of 18 times per interview. California University
ARTICLE IN PRESS
11As of the 2005–2006 school year, all credential programs may
only recommend preliminary credentials. This means new
teachers must participate in an induction process in their first
years of teaching to obtain a clear credential.12An inclusion site is an inclusion classroom at their school or
at another school.
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wants to transmit knowledge and skills about
inclusion to their students. The university wants to
inculcate values and interest about inclusion too. In
short, they want to socialize the credential candi-
dates about inclusion.
The use of the word inclusion in this study denotestwo concepts: a philosophy and a placement
preference. The philosophy is the ‘‘commitment’’
and the placement is ‘‘in the school and classroom he
or she would otherwise attend.’’ Inclusion propo-
nents, like the professors in the moderate/severe
special education program at California University,
often advance the idea that inclusion is more than a
placement option; they posit that true inclusion
indicates that all children are equal members of the
classroom, satisfying one goal of public education,
that of preparing students for participation in a
democracy (Barton & Tomlinson, 1984; Gartner &Lipsky, 2002; Slee, 2001). Teacher talk of inclusion in
this paper uses both philosophy and placement
almost interchangeably. In fact the term has become
so reified that no explanation is given as to the
meaning of inclusion in these interviews. The degree
of ambiguity will become analytically important in
understanding different levels of socialization experi-
enced by credential candidates.
The candidates are aware of the processes (like
coursework and field placements) used to socialize
them into believing in and acting for inclusion, butthey have not necessarily adopted inclusion as the
program would have expected. The message is
filtered—selected, modified, and/or rejected—by
the student teachers. The students in the program
learn about inclusion in theory but adapt or change
the notion of inclusion to conform to their prior
beliefs and their current work settings. The out-
comes are not what the university would have
expected. The analysis in this paper will consist of
examples of outcomes typified by selective socializa-
tion, complete socialization and rejected socializa-
tion about inclusion by the credential teachers.
4. Findings
This section will highlight the different themes
induced from commentary about inclusion within the
interviews. This program uses the shared norms of
vocabulary as one way to socialize the credential
candidates about inclusion. The common parlance of
inclusion demonstrates the degree of shared language
used by teacher candidates; however, the candidates
orient to the notion of inclusion in a variety of ways.
For example, several participants speak of inclusion as
a constraint while others speak of it like a political or
religious cause. Though socialized about one way of
speaking about where students with disabilities should
be taught—that of inclusive settings—the participants
in this study question the legitimacy of that claim. Theyfilter claims made about inclusion through lens of prior
experiences and their current workplaces. This filtering
about inclusion shows varying degrees of socialization,
in part due to inherent weak socialization of teacher
education programs, but also due to participants’ own
schooling and current teaching assignments.
A quick perusal of the data would give the
impression of a strong message about inclusion,
both as a normative value that all children should
learn together, and as a preference for placing
children with disabilities in the same environment as
other students. This perception comes from theadvocacy of inclusion in coursework and in
practicum experiences. However, credential candi-
dates are also socialized by their workplace and
through prior experiences. They were mostly
educated in schools that did not include students
with disabilities in the mainstream classrooms and
all work at schools that do not include all students
in the general education classroom all of the time.
A credential candidate might be assigned as an
inclusion teacher, but all the schools that candidates
teach at also have pull-out programs andseparate classes for other disabled children at the
same school. This is important in understanding
how two inclusion teachers can have very different
beliefs about inclusion as evidenced in Section 4.1.
Credential candidates take university teachings
about inclusion and filter those ideas through their
own daily teaching experience—what they take away
from the process is a tension between their own
schooling experiences without children with disabil-
ities in their classes, their daily teaching where they
may be a part of an inclusion program or not, and the
university message that inclusion is not one of several
choices about where and how to educate children with
disabilities, but the only way and place to teach
children with disabilities. This tension results in three
different, and sometimes overlapping, socialization
outcomes for credential candidates—complete socia-
lization, selective socialization, or rejection of
California University’s socialization about inclusion.13
ARTICLE IN PRESS
13Lacey (1977, p. 132) calls this the ‘‘intersection of biography
and situation.’’
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4.1. Almost complete socialization
Alice came to teaching from the business world.14
She spent years as a computer programmer than as
a consultant. She left her job for personal reasons
and slowly worked her way into the field of education. She worked as a paraprofessional with
an inclusion teacher. The person she worked for
encouraged her to go get a teaching credential and
assured her she would be a good teacher. Alice
entered California University after securing herself
a job as a middle-school inclusion teacher. She
found the philosophy of the program to align with
what she had learned as a paraprofessional. Alice’s
interview is peppered with many statements about
inclusion and her philosophical support of it. For
example, she said, ‘‘There’s really no other choice but
to be an inclusion teacher, I mean yes, there are otheroptionsy’’ (line 40), but for Alice there is not; she
changes the conversation to another topic at this
point in the interview. She only wants to be an
inclusion teacher. She admits: ‘‘My bias is very clear.
Yeah, that’s how I feel , very strongly about it’’ (line
52). She also divulged that her philosophical
alignment with the university program is part of a
larger social agenda she espouses, ‘‘it’s just that I
don’t like the idea of segregated anything’’ (line 54).
She later continues, ‘‘I just think anybody should be
in inclusion, soy
I will stand by that’’ (line 163).Alice’s personal views align closely with the
programmatic ones and she is willingly socialized
into accepting inclusion as a placement option to
educate students and as the dogma of the program
and for herself. At first she seems like the perfect
example of complete socialization; she shares the
professional values of inclusion, knows the language
and espouses inclusionary practices.
Alice might agree wholeheartedly with California
University about including all students in general
education classrooms, but her valuing of inclusion
extends only to the students in her immediate
control. Students who were in other classes or
treated differently in school were not a voiced
concern. Alice said:
that’s not uncommon to see, special day class
with an inclusion program. Um, seems to work
fine here, I mean they’re doing their thing, we do
our thing (line 159).
She sees children in the next classroom who spend
more than 60% of their school day away from their
peers but does not question that practice. Though
Alice believes in inclusion ideologically, she enacts
her beliefs of inclusion only for the students with
whom she works. This may be due to institutionalconstraints she must contend with, the strong force
of workplace socialization that makes differential
treatment of students acceptable, other forms of
socialization not brought out in the interview or a
combination of forces. Alice is the only credential
candidate in this study who comes close to complete
socialization by California University. It is very
difficult to be completely socialized to a new way of
believing when there are so many internal and
external factors influencing socialization about
inclusion as a place and as a philosophy.
4.2. Selective socialization
Though Alice aligns herself closely with the
university’s mission, other teachers felt the push of
inclusion as an unrealistic demand on their daily
teaching practice. The other teachers struggle more
with the reality of including all students in a general
education setting most or all of the time. This
section will illustrate the teachers’ struggles with a
lack of connection between university teachings and
that of their workplace, parental concerns, and thereality of teaching students with significant disabil-
ities. These factors inhibit complete socialization
about inclusion.
Loni is an inclusion teacher in a district who is
having trouble educating any of their students. She
laughs aloud and says:
they’re having trouble with the regular students
so I can kind of understand why they don’t have
a—(Laughs) a special ed program too much.
But this is more than just a passing point; herdistrict is undergoing a great institutional change
superseding her struggles as an inclusion teacher.
Loni says:
I don’t feel like my program is fully supported by
Lawndale15 and it’s kind of making me burned
out by it.
For Loni, teaching about inclusion is one of many
worries at her school, not the only one. Institutional
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14Selective information about participants has been changed in
order to protect their identities.
15School districts’ names and identifying information have
been changed to protect anonymity.
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pressures that make her feel burned out outweigh
her concern about inclusion, even though she is the
inclusion teacher.
Sarah, a special day class teacher at an elementary
school, spoke most strongly about the disconnect
between theory and practice.
16
She understandswhat the university is asking of her, but also
understands that the reality of implementing inclu-
sion at her school is a different story. Sarah has had
experiences in a variety of settings from a summer
day camp to a residential treatment center for
children with emotional difficulties. She feels that
these diverse activities have given her lots of
strategies that work with all kinds of students.
Now she works in a segregated setting with
problematic paraprofessionals and a lack of support
from the administrators at her school. Sarah’s
discourse reveals the dichotomous nature of whatshe experiences on a day-to-day basis. She says that
the idea of inclusion ‘‘is ideologically sound but not
necessarily tied to the realities and the constraints
that the school has’’ (line 157). She acknowledges the
university’s push for inclusion, while at the same
time juxtaposes that with her day-to-day teaching
experiences:
they (the professors) are looking at a macro level
they’re looking at systems change; what can be
lost sight of when you look at a macro level (is) just the micro—the little places where it doesn’t
work (line 194).
Sarah indicates that she teaches at one of those
‘little places’ and things are not easy for her.
Perhaps the most poignant quote from Sarah refers
to the language used at her university versus that
used at her school site:
At California University I talk about the
‘individual who experiences autism’ and the
‘individual who provides support and assistanceto the individual who experiences autism.’ At
Fernleaf Unified, I have a class for ‘students with
severe handicap’ and I have ‘four aides to the
handicapped’(line 262).
The difference between ‘people first’ language and
the use of ‘handicap’ indicates the gulf between
language socialization at the school and at the
university and helps explain Sarah’s frustration with
inclusion. Sarah would like to have her students
included in general education classrooms but has
many organizational barriers that keep her from
completing her goals. Sarah’s frustration with twocompeting organizations forces her to break down
in the interview and cry.
Sarah is not the only one who indicates a
disconnect between the university mission and the
practicalities of every-day teaching. Other credential
candidates experience conflict between what the
university wants and the realities of their daily
teaching experiences. Jan, a teacher who works with
children at several different schools each week, talks
about a ‘‘balance’’ between inclusion for the sake of
social relationships and needing time with students
to work on life skills that she feels cannot take placein the general education classroom. Rodney would
like his students to be more included in the general
education setting but the placement of a county
class on district property hinders inclusion. Other
teachers do not have to include his students because
his students are not technically part of the district.
Therefore, only some teachers at Rodney’s school
are willing to include some students for discrete
times of the day.
Rodney also spoke about parental choice rather
than his own belief or that of his workplace asreasons to include disabled children with their
general education peers or not. When asked why
some of his students spend more time in general
education than others, he says, ‘‘because the parents
pushed ’’ for their children to be more included.
Sarah had parents who wanted her to make their
children ‘‘normal ’’ and thus include them in general
education. Loni worked with parents who did
not care where their child was educated but
struggled with how to teach their daughter how to
communicate. In this case, following parental
preferences is a major factor in the education and
placement of students with disabilities, regardless of
what California University teaches.
The last case of selective socialization has to do
with the students themselves. Several of the teachers
spoke about the degree of students’ disabilities as a
factor in embracing inclusion as a setting for some
children. Sarah, Loni, Jan, Rodney and Terry felt
there needed to be time to teach ‘‘ functional skills’’
to children with severe impairments. The general
education classroom does not have time set aside to
teach students how to brush their teeth, wash their
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16The word ‘strongly’ is used to indicate the emotion felt by
Sarah in the interview. She broke down into tears during the
interview as she struggled through explaining the university’s
expectations and her inability to push her school to embrace
inclusion too.
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clothes or ride a bus. Many of these teachers feel
that those things need to be taught to their students
because they believe the students would not learn it
elsewhere. They also have concerns about increasing
academic standardization like scripted curricula in
general-education classrooms, making the environ-ment non-conducive to students with alternative
learning needs.
Institutional mismatch, parental concerns, and
differential priorities of teaching students with
significant disabilities in schools that are not
modified to accept these students impact credential
candidates’ socialization. Selective socialization
takes into account credential candidates’ own
schooling and current experiences as teachers as
filters for what is possible with students who have
disabilities in their workplaces. Most of the candi-
dates in this study, and I would posit in general, willfall into this category unless teacher education
programs implement more effective socialization
processes.
4.3. Rejected socialization
This last teacher, Terry, says she has learned a lot
about inclusion and how to talk to parents and
teachers about inclusion, but rejects the idea herself.
Terry has been assigned as an inclusion teacher but
has not adopted the identity of one at a high school,where 20% of the students have an Individualized
Education Plan (IEP). She has been a teacher at the
school for the past 2 years. Prior to teaching she was
a paraprofessional in special education for the past
5 years in a variety of settings. She worked one-on-
one with a student with autism and has several
paraprofessional experiences in special day classes.
Her first job with students with disabilities was as a
home health care aide during college. On some days
she worked at home and on other days she took the
child to school. Terry enjoyed being in school with
the girl and decided teaching might be for her.
Additionally, Terry has a brother with a learning
disability who went to school in special day classes.
When asked about how her brother liked the
separate settings, she said:
He didn’t actually start leaning until he was in an
enclosed special day class with a teacher who
knew what he needed to teach, you know, to be
able to learn.
Though Terry herself is assigned as an inclusion
teacher, she has misgivings about the position. Her
job is to support students with moderate/severe
disabilities in a general education high school
classroom. She would like to pull students out of
the general education setting more often. She is not
sure that all of their needs are provided for in that
setting. She worries that the social aspect of studentslearning to interact with each other overtakes the
other skills she wants her students to have.
Inclusion, for Terry, is a setting that does not meet
the needs of all students with disabilities, not an
ideological imperative for all students. Being an
inclusion teacher is an occupational assignment, not
a philosophical decision. In this case, it is clear that
Terry’s own schooling experiences, or more pre-
cisely, those of her brother, provide a much stronger
socializing force than either her job or her university
experience. Terry saw separate settings as beneficial
for her brother and thinks they would be beneficialfor her students as well. Terry has received the same
university education as her peers but has a very
different filter. Terry clarified her views on inclusion
long before entering her credential program and
rejects California University’s socialization. She
teaches students in an inclusive setting, but has
not embraced the identity of an inclusion teacher or
been effectively socialized by the university into the
philosophy of inclusion.
5. Limitations
Interpretive traditions of teacher socialization
acknowledge the role of structure and agency in
the process of socialization. New teachers make
sense of knowledge learned at the university
program, their prior knowledge and things learned
at their school sites. This study agrees with other
teacher socialization findings and highlights specific
examples of teachers filtering university teaching
about inclusion. It offers a starting point for
understanding programs with an explicit philosophy
and the limitations of a single program to change
school placement for children with moderate to
severe disabilities. It is also a starting point to
understanding the process of socialization where
credential candidates teach and learn to teach
simultaneously. The study design, however, is
limited due to a self-selection process of intervie-
wees. The sample is biased towards people who were
willing to talk about their experiences and beliefs.
The remaining two individuals who chose not to be
interviewed may have views that differ greatly from
the people interviewed. Threats to reliability were
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student placement limits being able to practice
inclusion as California University would like.
Experiences in their own schooling, with students
with disabilities, and with students’ parents also
influence the filtering process.
California University is trying to make a changein educational culture by teaching and advocating
for including all children in the general education
classroom, but if this small group of teachers
provides any indication of a larger phenomenon,
then their efforts at socializing credential candidates
are not enough. It is unclear how much the schools
at which credential candidates work align with a
philosophic belief about inclusion as part of
creating a better democracy, but, since all of the
schools have other locations like resource rooms
and special day classes where children can be
educated, it would appear that the schools in thissmall study—at least—see inclusion only as a
placement decision for educating children with
disabilities. Given the institutional context these
credential candidates work in, the simultaneous and
continuous forces of socialization from California
University, their schools, and their occupational
requirements, it is no wonder that most of them
only achieved selective or partial socialization about
inclusion.
We can use this small study as a guide post for
further inquiry into socialization processes of credential candidates who are simultaneously full-
time teachers. We need stronger indicators of the
necessary factors in aligning prior experiences with
workplace and university socialization in order to
move teacher education to the transformative
experience it hopes to be.
Appendix
A.1. Interview protocol
Can you start off by talking about what work you
do now? How has your experience working at X
helped you think about disability?
Background questions. This first set of questions is to
help me understand what your prior and current
experiences have been.
So why did you want to become a teacher?
Age?
Sped?
What would you say was your primary motiva-
tion or drive? Was there something PULLING you
into teaching, or other careers PUSHING you away
from it?
Do you know other individuals who were special
education teachers?How was disability treated at your high school,
elementary school?
Have you worked with people with disabilities
prior to your teacher training program?
If yes, for how long?
Tell me about an experience you remember.
Is there anyone in your family diagnosed with a
disability?
If yes, what is their relationship to you? What is
their disability?
TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM
What were your perceptions of disability when you
started the program?
And how did you choose California University?
If I was a prospective student at CU, and asked
you about the program, what would you tell me?
Describe some professors who had the most
impact on how you think about disability.
Out of your whole program what lessons have
been the most important for you? The leastimportant?
What else would you have liked to learn about?
What was missing from your program?
How does your program address disability rights?
How does your program address disability
culture?
Definitions
Now I’d like to ask you about some words that are
really common in special education.
What do you think of when I say ‘‘disability’’?
What do you think of when I say ‘‘special
education’’?
What do you think of when I say ‘‘special needs?’’
What does the word handicap mean to you?
What does the word impairment mean to you?
VIEWS ON DISABILITY
Now I’d like to ask you about your future plans.
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