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Two Camps, One Question: How Should We Understand Interventions in Special Education? · DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates

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From the Division of Research of the Council for Exceptional Children,
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this is Dive In. I am your host, Federico Weitholler,
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professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to the eighth episode of the
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third season of Dive in. Today we're going to dig
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into a common word used widely in special education research and
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practice intervention. In special education,
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we frequently hear and read about different interventions.
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We are required to test and implement evidence based
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interventions and discuss if they are effective or not effective
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for whom. In one cut, in one context,
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the whole model of RTI is based on how students respond
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to interventions. There are also school wide interventions like school
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wide Positive Behavior Support. I think sometimes we
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use that word so commonly that we take for granted and
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we do not examine what do we mean by it and what are
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alternative ways to think about it.
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To dive into this meaning of this word, I invited Ayden Ball,
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professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
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He has developed the culturally Responsive Positive Behavioral Interventions
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and Support framework and the Learning Lab methodology.
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In learning labs, stakeholders like educators,
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students, families, policymakers and community representatives,
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especially those from marginalized communities, design and
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implementation culturally responsive behavioral support systems and
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interventions that may solve some of the problems they have in their schools or in
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their communities. In our conversations, we discuss and critique how different
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camps in the special education field have approached interventions.
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We provide alternative approaches that are less linear and
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involve the participation of key community members. Are you ready to delve
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into interventions? Well, let's dive in.
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Thank you, Ayden for being here with us. It's a pleasure to have
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you on the show. Thank you, Federico. It's such a pleasure to be here.
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And yeah, I have been following your work. This is amazing.
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So I look forward to opportunity. Yeah, I mean, it's great. I mean,
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just full disclosure, IDO and I know each other for a long, long time.
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We study doctoral program. Actually,
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the reason that I ended up in a doctoral program is his fault because I
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was going to remember that somehow my master's advisor
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contact me with him back on the day because I was interested in issues of
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disproportionality and you were working with Alfredo Artilles at the moment and you
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need to talk to this guy who's doing the doctoral student doing work on disproportionality
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and cultural responsive stuff in the special ed and I got in touch with
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him and he told me about the funding that was aic. So for any
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piece of bad research that I produce and any harm I
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do in the world because I became a
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professor, we know who to blame is on the other side of this
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zoom screen is item bound. Thank you, Federico. That's the
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end of the show. I guess that's the end of the show. Exactly.
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No, but jokes aside, I want to talk
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to you about interventions in a special education.
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It's a. No, a very,
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we say contested topic,
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and it's also such a
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daily life word in special education research, Right. It's such a common word that
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we sometimes, I think, tend to take for granted. And people hear
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intervention and thinks about one particular thing and doesn't allow to
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open up for different kinds of intervention. So I want to ask you first,
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I mean, we can discuss this. Uh, what is your impression of
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how traditionally interventions have been thought of or
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defined within special education or special education research? All right.
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Okay. So this is what I'm gonna
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start with. This is my. For. This has been my formulation for
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a while. When I came to special education field from psychology
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and came to us from Turkey,
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my country, my hometown, home country.
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I figure out the special education literature in
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two ways. Actual education research, Federico. So one
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hand, there was this traditionalist,
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a theoretical, a historical approach
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to special education. They were just saying, look, this is nothing to do with ethics.
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This nothing to do with moral. This nothing to do with the theory. These kids
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have issues, and their issues, their problems have not been understood
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and adequate to serve. So our job as a scientist,
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objective scientists, to give them what they need. Just like they have diabetes,
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we give them the medication that will help them,
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right? We diagnose their needs. Like the testing,
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almost like a blood test. We give them whatever it is. Like they use those
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kind of similes for, like the medical model, right? They are just saying,
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look, just like the medical, physical, we have this behavioral interventions. It helps them
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to talk, it helps them to function, brush their teeth, go to work,
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whatever it is, whatever they are targeting and we
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are giving them. And the question is, are we giving them the right amount?
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Right, Those are right. And find the right people, wrong people,
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so forth and so on. That was very one
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approach, and that was the dominant approach. Federico, you may remember when we entered the
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field, and the majority of the field in the United States at least, was that.
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And even though they said they are ET that they had a theory
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called behaviorism, and then that emerged in the 70s
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to cognitive behaviorism, right? Actually, I was very familiar with this one because I came
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from psychology and I was so shocked to see that they were
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still in the 50s, 1950s, 60s era discussions. I'm like, okay,
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this is very hardcore behaviorism.
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And in psychology, people moved away from that. You know, there are different traditions.
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But in special education that was dominant view. I can understand one way
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because again, they were serving a purpose. There was a historical background of populations.
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People with disabilities have been underserved, they are not recognized, so forth and so on.
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That was progress movement
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for a while. Right. But their conceptualization of the individual
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was very individualistic, even the micro individualistic, meaning that they don't even see
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the full person, they were just seeing the person. Let's say you're a teacher,
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I'm a student, and you give me a prompt to read and write and
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I'm struggling. Right. And your job is to focus on that micro task,
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which is the writing letters in certain ways, so forth and
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so on. The other approach in special education was what
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let's say called for lack of a better word, critical approach. Right.
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These people who have been bringing some other issues, look, they said when
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you're focusing on these technical, physical, biological aspects,
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there are other issues like you are missing. Like the disability has been politicized,
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it's a cultural element and the consequences of identification. Special education
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identification services are very important.
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We need to focus on the context, we need to focus on the history of
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these, like who's. Who is benefiting from those identifications,
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who's marginalized through those identifications. And the one phenomenon was
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disproportionality. To make the point look, historically black
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and brown students and indigenous students have been placed
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in special education for behavioral disorders, learning disabilities,
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speech and language pathologies, so forth, intellectual disabilities,
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so on and so forth. So they were these two camps.
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I mean they had their tools, right? It's just tool was a quantitative research,
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numbers, mathematics. And that kind of issue is the quantitative researchers mostly
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in the camp of this traditional camp, behaviorist camp,
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Other one is mostly qualitative policy analysis.
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In the one camp, they were all good, they're all important. And I
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saw myself as, you know, in the more critical camp because for me education
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is a political issue. And you cannot just focus on the
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teachers interaction with the students. You need to look at classroom,
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school, neighborhood, donation. Right. For example.
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You cannot just say that, well, this is what I do, I'm a technician,
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I'm helping out students. Currently, as you may follow,
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we don't have the department of Education.
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I mean all of the basic fundings are under attack.
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All the federal employees, federal structures
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are dismantled, like research and practice.
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Here we are. So you cannot just say, well, all I
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do is just helping out these poor kids struggling with these reading, writing, speak Whatever
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it is, or emotional control on themselves. Because whatever
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we do is political. Right. And the political system can impact that. So coming
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back to my point, Federico, So my understanding of intervention is this. We need
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to do something about it. Because the problem shortcomings of those two camps,
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critical camps in general, obviously I'm talking about generalization, right. And cut
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me off if you have other questions. Or the behaviorism. Again, I'm just talking about
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generalizations. Two camps
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are actually for me, their approach was the same.
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It seems crazy or it seems like the out of this
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world to say that if I ask the behaviorist people special
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education traditions camp or the critical camp, just like, I think you are doing the
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same thing. They're like, no, no, we don't do that. We are this and that.
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But if you look at a little bit deeper, for example,
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what the critical people are, quote, unquote. Again, I'm one
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of those camps. But what they are doing, usually they are writing about, let's say,
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agency of the black students. Black students have agency. They find
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themselves in hard situations and they find themselves this hard education
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system. And the special education is cracked for them. Falling into crack.
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Yeah. Okay, then what are you doing with that?
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Well, I produce knowledge. I'm just speaking
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for them, right? I produce knowledge and people are gonna read my paper books.
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They are gonna buy my books. Teachers are gonna buy my books. Let's say I
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write. I. I developed a framework called critical special education critspat.
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And I'm gonna write a book and everyone's gonna read it and they're gonna
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do the right thing. Basically the idea is that the cognition first
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then they are doing competence. Teachers are gonna learn
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about the internal racism. They have systemic racism. They have a system as
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then they are gonna do the right things. But who's gonna do.
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When are they gonna do it? Like,
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because when we write an article, usually if most of time actually
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people don't do research. If they do research,
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it's published like two, three years later. And again,
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think about the relevant research. A research published in 2025 is not
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relevant anymore because again, at that time reality was different. Special education fund
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was different. 504 plan providing services for the health
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services for the students who are struggling with temporary difficulties
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were different. Now in 2026, moving into
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2026, we have a different era. So idea is that just
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like the behaviorist camp, or what I call technical camp, technical versus critical
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Technical camp was the same thing. We are scientists,
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objective scientists. We develop tools, we develop models, we test that in our
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backyard. Usually if, let's say I'm at UW Medicine,
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I'm testing that the very close school to me and
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pilots study and spread out the world, write the book, write the model, get the
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grant, usually technical camp, get lots of grants, lots of technical
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centers, so forth and so on. They are still the knowledge producers, both behavior
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technical camp and the critical camp. And the idea is
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that they are in the privileged space, right?
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They are knowledgeable, they are the knowing entities and
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they just spread the knowledge to world. And this poor teachers,
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poor practitioners, poor family members, poor students, poor policymakers are
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going to read about it, they are going to be enlightened and they are going
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to do the right thing. I hope I'm not being too argumentative, but this is
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again caricatur version of Federico, what I'm thinking. So there were
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those two camps, because what they are coming from is this French
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and British and Scottish Enlightenment idea was that
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with the British and Scottish and French Enlightenment idea is that
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individualism is very important. At the time, that was a progressive idea.
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Individualism is very important and we think the unit of analysis as individual,
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right? And this is coming from the Immanuel
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Kant is a famous German philosopher.
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Also idea is the criticism, right? The critical. So if people are criticizing
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the world, criticizing themselves, they are going to find the right knowledge and they are
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going to do the right things, right? That's the one tradition. But there's another
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tradition called German tradition model or
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German idealism, which is coming from the Hegel, which is coming from Marx,
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Engels. And actually, if you go further,
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go beyond the bureau, there are two camps for me in the philosophy.
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I'm going to get back to your point. Fade. So three camps in the point.
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Going a rabbit hole now, but I'm. Going to get out, okay,
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one camp in philosophy. If you look at the history of philosophy, there are two
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camps. One is philosophy of being.
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They are just saying, look how Federico he is, how became
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he is, his capabilities, his deficits,
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his brilliance, his struggles. All of those
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things about you, right? What I call them the
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philosophy of being. And this philosophy can be found
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in India, China. It can be found in
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Greek philosophy, for example, Socratic philosophy.
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Socrates, Plato and Aristotele were just about being,
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right? They were just like how they became being and the ideal world
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and how they became. And the idealism is very important. Plato's idea,
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right? The ideas are perfect, actions are faulty. So let's study these things like
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the being, how people become who they are and what they are like
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phenomenon, right? What is federic is about. Second tradition in philosophy
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is what I call the philosophies of becoming. Philosophies of becoming
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also can be found in Greece, India, China and in
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Africa in different traditions you can find those. And those are about
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how people are constantly changing. How people actually
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they don't see the people as static being. They are always saying people,
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world, universe is becoming all the time,
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right? So Federico, what I see, Federico is not a static
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entity. Federico is same Federico when he's interacting with kids. He's going to
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be next year he's going to be same Federico, passive. No, what I see is
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Federico is changing, context is changing. And interacting with Federico, I'm changing.
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So almost like the river metaphor, right? This is the Presocratic
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philosophers. They famously say,
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you cannot bat in the same river
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twice because river has changed, you have changed. So hence
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the world. And you can find this one in India, actually Piraveda
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era. If you look at the materialistic philosophies of
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India, you can say that. And in India, for example, Buddhism is a great example
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for this one. Like philosophies of being. And in the traditional religions
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and the Western thoughts after Socrates and
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Socrates are philosophies of being mostly. So coming back to the
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point for me, the critical camp, see, I'm bringing that everything back to.
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We're getting out of the hole, we're getting out of the hole. Call with me
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please, the Alice. Go with me. By getting out of the hall, we will
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appear in Alice in Wonderland. All right,
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so when I came to this field, I was just looking at for me
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so called critical, what I call critical special educators.
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Again, I'm talking about mostly there are wonderful people who are just blurring
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the boundaries. I'm just talking about general camps, right? And critical,
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so called critical camp in education research, the same thing for me, critical camp
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and then the behaviors or technical camp for
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me are following the philosophies of being,
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right? So their entities are static and
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their job is to identify those fundaments and inform the people so
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that they are going to do the right thing. Either they are going to learn
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how to do double intervention, how to teach reading, what worked
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was sound. What worked was sound. Or they're just going to do this
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is. What do they call the implicit bias? For example,
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idea is that everyone has that in the brain hidden somewhere.
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So if we just give the right, if they read the right book,
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if they read the right pd, they have the right pd, teachers are going to
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realize that, oh my God, I have this implicit bias. And then they are
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going to do the right things. Again, assumption is that if you go back to
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assumptions, researchers, either critical or technical, are the knowledge
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producers, all knowers. They know who has the implicit bias,
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what is the implicit bias. Or they know what reading is, how reading can
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be taught and what reading can do.
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And they are just producing knowledge, telling the people
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and the practitioners by reading the book, getting training, they are going
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to do the right things. So my conceptualization of intervention is different.
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So I follow. Let's get to that. Let's get to that. But you
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know, I want, I want to just comment to some, some of the things you
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say. I think it was fascinating. I always thought that even like the critical camps,
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even though like they try to address context. Right. I will, I will distinguish both.
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As seen, you know, the, the more traditional dominant way of interventions
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have done a lot of research interventions
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how to change individuals cognitive abilities or individuals
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academic performance or individual behavior. Right. The other one tried to focus more on
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context. I'm thinking about the argument such as it's not so
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much the student is how the
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classroom and school is structured in ways that position the student as deficient
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and is making the student fail the whole. For those who have read School
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failure by Ray McDermott and Baren,
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that kind of argument. But I think you're right because both of
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them, even though one critiques the context and maybe the classroom design or
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the classroom instruction, rather than focus on individual students,
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they're both attempting change. I think they have both different
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conceptualizations of the problem. Right. I want
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to make that distinction because I think one has the more traditional way,
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has the consumption of the problem, that the problem is within the student. Right.
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The other one has a conceptualization of the problem, that the
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problem is actually how the school and the classroom or even
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the community is structured in certain ways that's making the student fail.
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Right. So different ways to understand the problem. But I think what you're saying
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is that even though they have different ways to understand the problem,
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the kinds of solutions that they're bringing are very similar.
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Yes. One quick explanation. Ray McDermott,
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Warren, Barbara Rogoff, Chris Gutierrez, Alfredo Artilles,
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David Connor and all of those greats,
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actually they are in the becoming camp. I'm going to come back to that.
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But yes, to answer your question,
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this is what I'm. If I'm calling myself critical scholar, if I have
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some issues with let's say students in prison system, I work in the prison
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system for a research project. And if I'm just going over there collecting data from
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Those kids, they are struggling in the system. They are black and brown kids.
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And I'm collecting their writings, I'm collecting other stuff and writing about
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these things. And then at the end I'm
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hoping that someone is going to read and do the right thing. I think all
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I just do is like, who's benefiting from this research? I write an book,
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I write an article, I got my tenure, I got my grants.
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Well, it seems like you are critical, but you are benefiting
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from that work because those students are in the same situation.
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And the solution is that. Let's think about this one. What is the intervention for
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these folks who are writing about these issues if they are just writing about
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these issues? And often they don't do even research because like Ray McDermott
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has done amazing work, right? Alfredo has been doing always. Those are great examples.
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Like they are doing actual work. But let's say I'm a newcomer and
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I want to make myself because in the capitalist structure of the US
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education system, US higher education, I need to co interm. I need to.
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I need to make like more citation for my work.
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I need to make something because I am commodifying knowledge
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in US higher education. They are telling you
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you need to be a superstar. Meaning that you need to coin something, you need
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to stamp something and knowledge and produce. Which means you need to own the knowledge.
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From my perspective, you cannot own the knowledge. That's not your knowledge. But anyway,
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coming back to the point, let's say I'm a critical scholar, so called. I have
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problems and I'm a brown person. I'm coming from the same cap. I'm coming
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from poor family, my both parents were disabled. These are real by the way.
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And I'm like, I'm just writing about poor people,
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poor people with disabilities, their families, their struggles.
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And I'm writing about those things. And what's my intervention?
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I write article, I'm hoping that someone is going to read or I
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read a book, I write a book and the districts are gonna buy my book,
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they are gonna invite me to give speeches to the pd professional development.
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That's my intervention. And my idea is that I'm gonna go over there,
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inform them, I'm gonna make money or I'm just gonna get privileged,
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just like the status. And then voila,
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that's my intervention. So that's why I'm just saying that's the theory
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of being for me idea is that those are static entities, either historic
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or historic marginalized. Minoritized groups are historic static groups.
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They don't have any kind of diversity. They don't have a written group diversity,
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they don't have anything else. And they are on the right critical
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camp. Though while I'm criticizing, because I'm inside it, while I'm criticizing,
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I'm not just dismissing the importance of that. If there is a broken school
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to prison pipeline or there's a broken prison system like
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the black and brown students in the United States, their journey is usually the
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school failures, special education and the prison system. We know that detention
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is increasing, every detention is increasing. Black and brown kids chance to be involving juvenile
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correctional system two times. We need studies for that. We need to show
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that. We need to show the historical context of how LD became ld,
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how intellectual disabilities became racialized. Right. Like we
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need those kind of things. But my question is that what
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are we going to do about that? Right? And that's my formula of intervention.
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And this is the principles.
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One is we don't own the knowledge. We generate the knowledge
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with people, not for them, not about them. Right. And whatever
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we do, we can write the research, but research should have immediate impact
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in the lives of the communities we work with, right? And we are joining
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forces with communities. So which means we need to get out of our comfort zone.
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And this takes a lot of time, community based research,
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community led research. And that also takes a lot of great
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theory because you cannot go over there, oh, let's come together,
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stay on the same, like a table, sit down on the same table and
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bring the people on the same table and they are going to come solution.
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It's not a new idea, but the idea is for me, what I
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realized that how to do that was missing in education research, not only in special
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education, education research. How we can bring together students, family members,
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community members, researchers,
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policymakers on the same place
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and they develop their solutions to their unique
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solutions, localized solutions. Because the other principle of what I think there's no
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one universal permanent solution to any kind of problems because
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problems are constantly changing and evolving, morphing. Like when you're
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talking about education in Bangladesh, you need to think about global warming.
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When you're thinking about the schooling for girls in Pakistan, you need to think
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about the global warming because Pakistan, even though contributing that country is contributing,
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leads to the global warming. They are one of the mostly affected country
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in the world. Country is one of the countries in the world. So when you're
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talking about the Chicago, you cannot talk about only education or
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schooling as you perfectly show that. Like this larger political movement
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about school choice. I mean, if you read Federico's work. If you follow his work,
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he was brilliant at showing that the quote unquote choice is basically another way
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of segregating students, right? Students, black and brown students, poor students from the risk
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students or the students with disabilities. If we are just going with
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the only mindset, Federico, if you ask today special education
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teachers, general education teachers, policymakers, even families if races should
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be separated in schools, black kids should go to black schools, Latino kids
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go to Latinx kids go to Latinx schools, they are going to say no,
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no, no, no. Racial segregation we are against, but our schools are more racially segregated
25:37
than civil rights era. So which means if cognition
25:41
was enough, we will have those kind of things. Right?
25:44
So life is complex, issues are complex and they are
25:48
constantly changing. Hence solutions will change. To be able to find the
25:53
app solutions, sustainable solutions and just solutions,
25:57
we need to localize the problem, problem identification and
26:01
problem solving process. That's the principle behind the question that
26:05
you ask about like you are going to ask about like learning
26:09
that methodology. I was about to ask you culture responsive
26:13
interventions that you've been developing. I think you have that name but let
26:17
me draw distinctions if I understand. Well, you know, one big distinction that I
26:21
grabbed from like prior approaches to you and
26:25
other colleagues that you work with and other people, not just you that are doing
26:29
this work is that it seems to me that as I say we're
26:33
generalizing a little bit that dominant viewing interventions and even some
26:37
of the critical according have a very direct approach
26:41
or theory of change. Right. They're going to say I have the
26:45
knowledge, I'm going to give it to you and suddenly everything's going
26:49
to change. Right. And the difference that I noticed when
26:53
you're telling me, I mean we'll name it Cultural Responsive Intervention because I
26:57
think that's the name that you have used in other articles is
27:01
that it's not a direct theory of change of
27:05
learning in the sense that I'm going to give you knowledge and you're going to
27:08
change your life and things are going to get better. But it's like we,
27:12
it's more dialectic, dialectical, right. Instead of direct. It's more are we
27:16
going to get together and with very particular structures or
27:20
ways of interacting that you may get to talk about that and different
27:24
kind of tools that we're going to use. We are going to develop problems that
27:29
are continuously evolving in our schools so we can have
27:32
real time solutions to the real problems that affect you.
27:36
Perfect, perfect, Federico. Even just side Note,
27:40
culturally responsive PBIs, positive interventional behaviors, people when
27:44
I try to publish articles, they are like, well, PBS has behaviorist roots and other
27:47
stuff. Of course I wrote about that. Like I'm criticizing that. Oh, culture responsiveness,
27:51
what is it? Or people are thinking. I coined the term cultural
27:55
PBIS to find a solution. No, no, it wasn't like that.
27:59
This is where I'll tell you a story. I got this job in this
28:03
cold place called Wisconsin. And I came from one of the hottest place in the
28:07
United States, maybe around the world, Arizona. And as an immigrant, I end up
28:10
in this winterland. And I start to work with the districts
28:15
around the idea about disproportionate. I went to school district, I said, look, I am
28:19
this guy. I study cultural historical construction of disability. I also
28:22
work on disproportionality. I had great mentors, I had great colleagues.
28:27
And what do you need from me? They are disproportional. Definitely.
28:31
I was working with them and the Department of
28:35
Public Instruction, the Wisconsin State Education Department
28:39
approached me and they said, we want to do something about this proportionality.
28:43
And I said, what are you doing? Well, we have the pbs which
28:47
is again, they're coming from this technical camp, moving into
28:50
again, they try to move into the context, these behaviors.
28:54
Traditional leaning scholars in education, psychology and special education are trying
28:58
to move into this context understanding because they are
29:02
trying to focus on the whole school context, so forth and so on. Their impact
29:07
was coming or inspiration coming from public health, right?
29:10
In public health. This model worked. The whole school context, whole context
29:14
approach worked. But their theories were still old.
29:17
They were still thinking about the individual outcomes. And when it
29:21
comes to the context, they didn't know what to do. They're like, okay, we need
29:25
to create a predictable context. So we are
29:29
just going to harmonize the whole school context, coordinate all of the resources.
29:34
So that was pbs. PBS was doing basically, they had a center again,
29:38
they had lots of money from the federal government. This is the old era now,
29:40
right? Then the technical camp, because they have numbers and everything,
29:44
federal government was very comfortable with them. They giving money because science was associated with
29:47
the numbers. And they were getting money and they were just having centers like in
29:51
Chicago, they have a PBS center in Wisconsin,
29:55
so forth and so on. That was one camp. But like the nation or the
29:59
internationally, it was working to diminish the detention,
30:03
suspension, so forth and so on. But when you look at it, it's proportional to
30:06
what's still over there. And people were seeing the source sides of that
30:10
in Wisconsin and they said, that doesn't work. Then we have also another issue Another
30:14
group called Culturally Responsive Education. So they had two centers
30:19
trying to address the similar issues. And they're like, we are trying to
30:23
combine these two things as culturally responsive pbs.
30:27
So it wasn't coming like, oh, I need to come up with a catchy name
30:30
so that I can just get a tank. It wasn't like that idea was that
30:34
the state of Wisconsin had those two centers. And for me,
30:37
they need to connect, they need to speak to each other because PBS was trying
30:41
to move into the context. But when you come to the context, you need to
30:44
talk about race, you need talking about. And they didn't want to touch the race.
30:47
Like the traditional special education people didn't want to touch race. Cultural Responsiveness
30:52
center was following this kind of traditional, what I call the critical cap. Like people
30:56
like me, they were inviting like me, people like me to talk about this racism
31:00
and everything, talk about this story. But they didn't want to touch the like hiring,
31:04
firing, school schedule. They didn't want to go to the school system.
31:08
Right. They didn't want to do intervention. So I tried to create that thing to
31:12
combine that thing. Again, I'm not alone in this journey. I collaborated with the
31:16
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Great, amazing scholars over there.
31:20
And they don't publish, so people don't know their names. Again, if I publish something,
31:23
you're going to see my name. But there's a big work over there. They have
31:27
been doing amazing work. They provided funding, they provide opportunities for same thing
31:31
with the district, medicine school district. I partnered with their prior,
31:34
the former special education director who was retired and he was
31:38
teaching part time at the University of Wisconsin. I partnered with him because he
31:42
knows the system from 70s to 80s to 90s. Jack Jorgensen,
31:46
he was amazing scholar. So coming back to the point, that was Culturally
31:50
Responsive pbs, but the idea is Federic. I'm just going to
31:54
tell you something, don't tell anyone. Okay? So when you combine,
31:57
nobody would know this. When you combine this idea
32:02
like culturally Responsive and pbs, it seems like, oh yeah, you can.
32:05
No, you cannot do it. Or when you say we are going to do the
32:08
community based research, you cannot just go over there just haphazardly. I'm not just
32:12
saying the scholars should divorce from everything that knowledge.
32:16
I love books. If I can turn over here, I'm a traditional scholar. I love
32:21
sitting in a cold, warm place and reading. I'm not
32:25
so called, like I'm not activist scholar. For me,
32:29
I love reading, I love theories, I love history. But the whole
32:33
idea is this, you cannot just, I'M not just saying scholars cannot offer
32:37
anything. That's why I'm not removing us from the formulation we are useful.
32:41
But I think we need to reconceptualize our job as scholars,
32:45
researchers. Our job is not to give them the answers or to
32:49
define the problems for them. Our job is to process,
32:52
develop processes through which these local stakeholders facing
32:57
those issues with diverse those local stakeholders with diverse
33:02
and often opposing interests, histories can come
33:05
together and develop their own solutions locally, meaningful,
33:09
ecologically well solutions. I formulated
33:13
myself as a researcher, as process developer, deeper or studying
33:17
how people with multiple interests, diverse interests can come together and build
33:22
better, more inclusive futures. I am the scholar of that
33:25
right. That's the process. And again, there is a long tradition of this one for
33:29
me. Ray McDermott, Barbara Raghav, Michael Cole, Yuri Engelstrom,
33:33
Alfredo Artilles and you and others have been doing that.
33:37
Exactly. They are not just formulating the problem for people or giving
33:41
them the solution, haphazard or ready made solutions, either critical or
33:46
technical solutions, but what they are focusing on and attending the complexities
33:50
of the real life. And when you approach the complexities of real life, you need
33:54
a good theory. You cannot just go over there, let's get old. If you are
33:57
working with, let's say inland Chicago, you need to understand critical race
34:01
theory. You need to understand the black history black struggle, you need to understand the
34:06
workers struggle in Chicago. You need to understand the urban planning critical
34:10
geography as you have been using it. Because most of the time education policies
34:15
are made by, not by the teachers, not by the researchers, not by the policymakers,
34:19
even the real estate agents, right? They determine those
34:23
things. They determine who's going to live over there, what kind of sources are available,
34:26
so forth and so on. So all I'm just saying as researchers,
34:30
special education scholars, to understand these complexities and honor the
34:34
complexities of people's lives and understanding them as becoming issues
34:39
are always becoming and morphing and changing. And then people
34:43
are changing, communities are changing. We just joined that change
34:47
process and try to change that into more just equitable
34:52
solutions. But the equitable solutions are going to be.
34:55
Today's equitable solution is going to be maybe oppressive next day,
34:59
right next year, 10 years ago. That's why we need to build capacity
35:03
in local context. And I'll be happy to give you more examples from our research.
35:07
Yeah, you know, when I hear you, I have read your work and use
35:11
your work, I want to hear you express it. I mean, one of the
35:15
questions that I have and maybe the audience have is like how is it much
35:19
different from for example, design based research?
35:23
Design based research. Oh, interesting. Great, great question. Because that's
35:27
also about doing interventions with people, you know, getting, getting there and
35:31
finding solutions with policymakers or et cetera. Right? Yes. No, no,
35:35
no, that's great. Again, that's not a new idea. I didn't come up with this
35:39
idea. I never thought that I'm leading this way. I'm learning from others.
35:42
This if you look at again internationally,
35:46
Paulo Freire, right? Yeah, that's true.
35:49
But he has been doing that. We have critical psychologists from your country,
35:53
Argentina, Chile. Latin America is
35:57
full of wonderful innovations, not only in education, but social policies.
36:01
Like we have the theater of oppression. Right. Boal's work in Brazil,
36:05
Hugh. And today I visited two weeks ago
36:09
I was in Brazil, I was visiting Sao Paulo. There's a wonderful scholar over there
36:13
and she has been working with 500 schools to
36:17
develop their own curriculum and in the state of Sao Paulo. And she has
36:21
been doing amazing work. Same thing with design work. Learning scientists come up with
36:25
this idea. Brown and others, just like they have been doing that or in the
36:28
critical camp, let's say Souvenir has been doing work, important work to show me the
36:32
critical issues. Right. Alfredo has been there, David Connor, who's doing that.
36:36
You have been doing that. There are lots of colleagues who are doing those kind
36:38
of things. Again, I'm not just saying I'm unique in that stuff. I have the,
36:42
you know, I reck I found the solution. What I'm just saying is I'm trying
36:46
to terrorize that and then we need to move
36:50
into this era and the design based research for example, still carrying
36:54
before me. And again there are. Design based research is even old right now in
36:58
the learning sciences. People are like social design experiments like
37:02
Chris Gutierrez Juro and others like the Shirin Wasuhi
37:06
and others have been doing this kind of important work. That's changing too.
37:10
But idea is formed in the design based research and again it has been criticized
37:13
heavily still the designers. Who's the designer?
37:17
Yeah, who's designing that thing? And again, I'm not
37:20
just saying haphazard way going to the work. Maybe I can. You know what,
37:24
Federico? I'll give an example and from our research,
37:27
because this is turning into another thing. Like I'm just telling people something
37:31
and I hope that they are going to understand what I'm saying and they are
37:34
going to do the right thing. But as you mentioned that we have been publishing
37:36
a lot of work with practitioners and in different contexts, elementary School, middle school,
37:41
high school, and we have now interventions in higher education.
37:45
I'll give you an example. Not from our research lab,
37:48
not from our research team in Wisconsin, but for example, Yahyang Li.
37:52
Yahya, can I give you examples? Frederick, is that okay?
37:55
Yeah, please. Yang lee graduated from UT Austin.
37:59
She's a great PhD student. And I met her and she
38:04
got a job in Illinois, Illinois State University. And she said,
38:08
I want to do learning lab. And she identified the issue that because she started
38:12
working her dissertation about homeless students
38:17
with disabilities experiencing homelessness or she calls houseless. And this
38:23
is a very interesting issue, right? Because it's almost like invisible in the both
38:26
regards. We have a huge housing price crisis and
38:30
huge special education issues. Specifically 1980s after neoliberal
38:35
policies dismantled all the safety
38:40
nets in the United States, in England, in Argentina, in Turkey,
38:44
after the military coups and everything. So we have homeless populations, right?
38:48
And we have students with disabilities experiencing homelessness.
38:51
And she did this. There's an alternative school,
38:55
alternative school district serving most of the students with experience
38:59
in homelessness. And some of those students are disabled.
39:03
And she put together a learning lab. What we call the
39:07
learning lab is our approach. Basically we put together 12 to 15 people,
39:11
multiple stakeholders, stakeholders who have been historically minoritized or
39:15
marginalized from decision making process. And that's the learning lab.
39:19
That's the problem solving, problem identification and decision making process. They develop new
39:23
systems. So idea is that she said, okay, this school district,
39:27
alternative school district, they built a learning lab. So idea is that the students experiencing
39:31
homelessness, disabled students experience homelessness, will go back to their district
39:36
general education setting because education is over there,
39:40
not high quality. As you know, the special education is not bad by itself.
39:44
Federico, you have an advocating that. But the idea is that what type of special
39:48
education you are getting, and again what kind of education you are getting, alternate schools,
39:51
they were not getting any kind of good education and social mobility was lacking.
39:55
So she built a learning lab over
40:00
there, included students experiencing disabled students experiencing
40:04
homelessness. As a learning lab member, their parents and
40:08
the district leaders, alternate district leaders and the
40:13
educators, they came together and they work on this IAP plans and
40:17
transition plans. Again, Yahyang didn't give the solutions to them,
40:20
right? And what they do actually they go through the questioning phase.
40:24
So we have this process, I told you, our research is about developing that
40:28
process through which local stakeholders can build capacity for solution,
40:32
future making, decision making, inclusive decision.
40:36
So that's their learning lab. And they design a plan
40:40
for those students with disabilities to transition into their natural Neighborhood
40:45
school districts or then school districts are going to understand the
40:49
issues those students are facing because transition is very important thing. Let's say if
40:53
they need a transportation because they are moving one hotel to another hotel,
40:57
one shelter to another shelter, how are they going to transport? For example, in Madison,
41:01
they develop the solution. On a side note, they hire Uber and the taxi drivers
41:06
to do that for them. So let's say they said, why don't you develop those
41:10
kinds of solutions? That's Learning Lab and Florida
41:13
school district. This is another example Florida school district called
41:17
Pinellas School District, which is this largest urban school district. And Yahyang
41:22
did that study in Illinois in urban suburban school right area
41:26
in Florida. They implemented learning lab
41:30
in five schools and they have more than 100 schools. They implemented
41:35
learning lab at five schools in 2019. Don't forget
41:39
that's the COVID year, right? Covid started and that's. And Florida experience
41:44
what we are experiencing in the United States ten years before us
41:48
because they had the same style of government. So it was illegal for
41:52
them to talk about race, it was illegal for them to talk about culture.
41:56
They deleted every context like they were just saying culture. Responsive interventions in
42:00
2019. And the governor said, you cannot say it. And they changed
42:04
the name, right? Well, they persisted for five years. They implemented
42:08
learning lab in five schools and now they spreading into almost 80 schools.
42:12
So in each school they took a learning lab.
42:15
Our research has been always about one school district. And they took that learning
42:19
lab into the whole school district instead of one school.
42:22
They spread the whole school district and the
42:26
five school. They built the learning lab in each school. And each school's context is
42:29
different. So for example, in one school they had the RTI response intervention team.
42:34
They inherited that team, right? In another
42:37
school, in coordination and collaboration discussion with the
42:42
new principal, he said, you know what? I'm going to do the whole school approach,
42:46
it's not rti, it's not pbis. So they approached
42:50
that and another school, they were already working with the parents.
42:55
They incorporated that parent team into learning that as
42:59
you can see, all schools are different. Their context is different. And when
43:03
you give people the chance to say, look, this is our term,
43:06
these big issues are bigger than you as a principal, it's bigger
43:10
than you as a parent, it's bigger than you as a teacher. We need to
43:13
come together and develop solution. And whatever you develop over here is
43:17
going to be implemented. Federico, that changes the whole dynamic because
43:21
people, all of us are at best when we are given opportunities to
43:26
make meaningful change in Our lives, not just for ourselves, but to other
43:30
people. So when I saw wonderful parents who don't have kids in the
43:34
school district, but who had kids in the school district, and school leaders in the
43:38
neighborhoods, important figures, they came to Learning Lab and they did amazing work.
43:42
They gave everything they have, the knowledge, historical knowledge, policy knowledge,
43:46
they did the advocacy for other people's kids. Because it's
43:51
amazing, Federico, most of the time we are so alienated.
43:54
Researchers, administrators, teachers, people are
43:58
so alienated and so powerless. We are just seeing like so powerless to
44:02
make decisions about our lives. Think about this one. In a school district,
44:05
in a school, you are just telling a student in
44:09
special education system, or a great student who graduates from that system, or the parents
44:14
just saying, look, you are going to develop the system, new system, culture,
44:18
responsive behavioral system, or culturally responsive curriculum,
44:21
inclusive curriculum, or a new system for the homeless kids.
44:25
And then that's going to be implemented next year.
44:29
So next year when you come to school, you are walking into the system.
44:32
Teachers are using, administrators are using, funding that system
44:36
which was developed and for that local school context.
44:40
Isn't that amazing? Like, as a researcher, that's the most satisfying thing I
44:44
have had. That's why I don't want to be argumentative, but I want to show
44:48
you and share my joy with the other colleagues, researchers and policymakers.
44:52
Believe me, we have done this one during the COVID in Florida,
44:57
in Wisconsin, we have done this work in Brazil, in Turkey, we have
45:01
done this work in urban, suburban and rural schools.
45:04
We have done this work with communities serving the indigenous
45:09
communities in rural Wisconsin. It works.
45:12
It works, it works and it creates sustainable change.
45:16
When you give power and opportunities to local school communities
45:21
to examine the issues they have, name the problem themselves,
45:25
not the researchers, not the policymakers themselves, and then just say,
45:29
okay, look at your resources, what's working, what's not working, Map out the
45:33
system you have. Then they move from individual agency, individual issues,
45:37
individual concerns, to collective agency. Almost like in Mediterranean. You are
45:41
close to Mediterranean, Federico. When we dive into Med tenancy, I'm sure you experienced
45:45
that in the morning. Like when you dive in, in Mediterranean, we can
45:49
see, by the way, if you have goggles, you can see undersea underwater. You dive
45:54
with the spares of the lights of the sun.
45:58
Beams of the sun go down and you see beautiful school of
46:02
fish. Schools of fish. They move and they reflect the sun
46:05
on their backs. That's like that. Like the beautiful,
46:09
beautiful collection of these individuals with different histories and different,
46:14
different backgrounds, different hopes, different goals coming together because
46:18
they have an immediate issue they need to solve. They understand issue.
46:21
They understand the system and develop the systemic solutions.
46:25
Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. You know, Adam, we're going
46:29
to close with a question that I always ask
46:33
to all my participants. Is that all
46:37
my interviewees, I asked them to dream a
46:41
little bit and ask them to see what would you like to see the next
46:45
five years in regards to the teaching and learning of students with disabilities?
46:48
Yeah. Okay. Again, my answer
46:52
is going to come from what I've been telling you. My answer is that
46:56
because I don't know, one solution is one futurist. They need to build
47:00
the solution. We need to build a solution. We need to build the future.
47:03
The theories of philosophies of becoming just like the past
47:08
future is always in construction, right?
47:11
And my idea is that people are going to be empowered
47:16
in local contexts in the communities in Venice when they
47:19
are against this kind of destruction of the city, right? Or in Brazil,
47:23
when they are addressing the environmental issue, they are
47:28
facing like a dirty river which is impacting their kids health. They are going to
47:31
take action. And when they take action, we are going to rally forces.
47:35
Because this kind of issues adapt like this. What we
47:39
call the runaway object. Yuri Angelstrom is calling the runaway object. The issues that
47:43
we are dealing with, the power, the refugee crisis, this political
47:47
increasing fascism and this new.
47:55
Tech federalism, all of those issues don't have one
47:59
solution. There is no one permanent solution. And there is no center is
48:03
changing, constantly changing, right? They are in interaction. Therefore solution is
48:07
going to change from one context to another context, one time to another time.
48:11
So my dream is that people are going to come together in their city,
48:15
in their neighborhood, in their school, in their country,
48:19
are going to develop inclusive decision making process almost like they
48:24
are going to have constant solving
48:29
and problem identification and problem solving process. What Freire
48:33
is called the cycle of. Of action and reflection, cycle of action after reflection.
48:37
And that's going to empower them. That's going to empower them to build better futures.
48:41
Because often, unfortunately again, 1980s and neoliberal
48:46
era is one bad thing about that which is impacting most of the, I guess
48:49
the Mike people like critical scholars, cynicism,
48:52
which means things cannot change, right? Teachers are
48:57
hopeless. We are losing 50% of the teachers in their first five years
49:01
because they don't get respect, they don't get power, but money.
49:06
Much more than that. They don't have any power to make changes in the
49:10
lives of the students. And they are like, look, I'm hopeless. I'm powerless. What can
49:14
I do? And they are great people. We have great educators, great researchers,
49:18
great policymakers. But somehow we don't have the processes to put them
49:23
together and develop solutions. The process may change. Learning that process
49:27
has changed because it doesn't belong to us. Like the Florida school
49:31
district took Learning Lab and made it something else. But the principles are the
49:35
same, starting with the questioning, then the analysis, historical and empirical
49:39
analysis, moving into modeling and then examining the new
49:43
system, modeling the new system, examining the new system,
49:46
running that system in the next year. Right? But they change it.
49:50
For example, in Indigenous Learning Lab, forming the group was different or questioning was different
49:54
because indigenous committee member Anishtabe Ojibe members are
49:58
wonderful problem solvers and their political skills
50:02
are amazing in that tribal community. And I asked them, like, how do you
50:06
solve these issues? Because these are very hard issues. Like we are talking about generations
50:10
of settler colonialism. Their lands were stolen, right? And their
50:14
grandparents were just kidnapped from their communities, cut their
50:18
head. Their language was banned. Don't forget, indigenous languages were banned until
50:23
1975. And then they were tortured,
50:27
literally. And we saw the bones of the young kids in Canada and
50:30
in the United States around what they call the Indian schools,
50:34
right? We are talking about this violent history, right?
50:38
The racism is violent, settler colonialism is violent,
50:41
sexism is violent, right? And the ableism is violent. So solution
50:46
is always, we need to understand this kind of history.
50:48
But then we ask them, what do you do? They start with the smudging
50:53
ceremony and that changed the whole dynamic. Like in the urban schools, we start with
50:56
the icebreaking activities and other stuff, right? It means each community is taking that
51:00
process, making their own. But they practice this kind of empowerment
51:04
with each other, right? They are powerful by themselves. They have an agency
51:08
by themselves. But they never come together because teachers are against other teachers,
51:11
teachers are against administrators. Administrators are alone at the top.
51:15
Parents don't know the system. What we learn, Federica is two things in
51:20
the whole work, international work in Learning Lab. One, no one knows the whole system,
51:24
right? They think they know, they don't. So what we do actually
51:28
we turn them into mapping out through mapping out process,
51:30
making them look the system is putting us against each other. These systems
51:35
elements are working, these are the resources. Once they identify those
51:38
parents are becoming amazing problem solvers. That teachers are becoming amazing problem
51:43
solvers because they know the system now, right? Moving from individual to collective,
51:47
moving from being, oh, Federico is like this,
51:50
this administrator is like this, this country is like that. But being
51:54
to becoming what they can be. So that's,
51:58
that's why I use the theory of the cultural circle theory, because cultural
52:02
circle theory, as Bronfanbrenner famously said,
52:05
it's not about what people are, it's about what
52:09
people can become. Yeah, so that's my hope.
52:14
So that's great. I hope we get to that some point that we start thinking
52:17
about kids, about their potential, what they can become and know what they are at
52:22
a very, very minuscule micro point
52:26
in time. Well, thank you so much Ayden, for being with us.
52:30
We could have kept talking for another hour, but actually we both have things to
52:34
do and it was lovely to have you here. Thank you always,
52:39
Federico. Again, thanks so much for doing this important work and I
52:43
look forward to being in dialogue with you others who maybe have
52:47
similar issues. So feel free, please tell them to feel free to email me.
52:51
They can google my name, they can find my contact information. I love
52:55
to hear from their work in their local communities like researchers,
52:58
policymakers, activists are doing this kind of
53:02
future making work. Because I'm on sabbatical and that's my task right
53:06
now. You just throw it there on my face. I mean sabbatical, I should throw
53:10
that. On my face again. I'm traveling
53:14
different parts of the world, but specifically in Brazil to learn from the communities.
53:17
They are not doing interventions with the researchers, but they also
53:21
call introversions. They don't need researchers or they haven't used researchers,
53:25
support from researchers, but they develop this kind of problem
53:29
solving and decision making spaces and they took actions. So all
53:34
I'm just saying there's always hope in this world and these kind of issues that
53:38
we don't know which way is up, like political turmoils, all of those
53:42
complex things are coming together. I think there's always hope
53:46
and we can rebuild in this crisis. Hades, the presocratic philosopher
53:50
always says, look in the Christianity, I'm going to say one more thing. In Christianity,
53:54
what's the Bible's first word? There was nothing and there was
53:58
a word and he says all become and it became right.
54:01
Hade says there was first there was chaos.
54:05
So chaos is actually is a generative place.
54:09
Chaos is generative place where the new worlds cosmos can emerge.
54:13
So out of this struggle, out of this messy complex
54:16
reality we are facing, we can create new worlds, more just more inclusive
54:20
world. So I'm hopeful, please don't give up hope and just,
54:24
you know, be humble and keep working, keep working because the
54:28
hope is always over there. The communities are doing amazing work. So if we connect
54:32
with each other support this work, this kind of work, empowering work.
54:36
I think we can change the world. Thank you. So let's hope and let's keep
54:40
hoping together. All right? Thank you.
54:46
Thank you for listening to Diver. I hope you
54:50
learned from this episode. As much as I did. Please help us
54:53
to spread the word about the show. See you next time.