Date of Award

2025

Degree Name

PhD Education for Social Justice

Dissertation Committee

Suzanne Stolz, EdD, Chair Emily Nusbaum, PhD, Member

Keywords

Inclusion, Special Education, Education Leadership, Teacher Professional Development

Abstract

This narrative inquiry examined how charter school educators experience inclusive education implementation while confronting ableist systems that maintain exclusion through seemingly neutral practices. This research emerged from my lived experience of how educational structures systematically marginalize disabled students while appearing progressive. The study investigated two research questions: how support structures and leadership practices either perpetuate or dismantle ableist assumptions embedded in educational practice, and how educators negotiate tensions between implementing evidence-based inclusive strategies and addressing environmental factors that create the need for those strategies.

Data collection employed semistructured interviews with eight credentialed educators across two Southern California charter school sites, supplemented by classroom observations. Analysis utilized Disability Studies in Education framework through Capper's seven tenets, employing thematic analysis to identify patterns illuminating how educational systems perpetuate exclusion or create transformative change.

Findings revealed sophisticated exclusion practices that maintain segregation while appearing inclusive. Both school sites demonstrated persistent ableism through institutional structures prioritizing adult comfort while systematically marginalizing disabled students despite stated commitments to inclusion. Professional development emerged as a critical battleground where competing ideologies about disability played out, with traditional approaches reproducing medical model assumptions while transformative approaches centered disabled voices and critiqued power structures. Participants described navigating contradictions between implementing interventions and addressing systemic barriers that necessitated those interventions, revealing how environmental obstacles are treated as natural rather than socially constructed impediments.

Results demonstrate that individual attitude change, especially when buttressed by a prioritization for comfort, cannot address barriers requiring systematic environmental transformation. The study contributes an Implementation Science Inclusion Fidelity Framework, demanding dismantling institutional structures that maintain exclusion rather than pursuing superficial accommodations that preserve ableist hierarchies while appearing progressive. Educational systems must confront how organizational practices perpetuate oppression against disabled students through policies, procedures, and professional discourse that appear neutral but function as sophisticated mechanisms of exclusion.

Document Type

Dissertation: Open Access

Department

Learning and Teaching

Download

Share

COinS