Exploring How Special Educators' Working Conditions Contribute to their Engagement of Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders in Effective Reading Instruction

The main findings of this project, as reported by the PI, are as follows: 

• Results of the first-mixed method study suggested that the staffing model for self-contained programs is highly consequential. Special educators who have partners who co-run their programs are better able to provide effective instruction because partners can manage significant behavior, which allows teachers to focus on instruction. This staffing model also seems to be essential for inclusion, as special educators without sufficient paraprofessional staff struggle to move students into general education classes if they need behavioral supports.
• Results of the second mixed-methods study indicated that access to and support for using strong curricula seems to be highly related to special educators’ instructional decisions. Further, in the focus group study, leaders and teachers indicated that increasing access to curricula is a feasible working condition to improve. Thus, ensuring access to strong curricula may be a relatively straightforward intervention to improve working conditions.
• Results of two studies indicate the importance of educators’ conceptions of disability for coordinating students’ inclusion. In one study, the  qualitative analysis found that moving students with disabilities from self-contained into inclusive placements requires intensive coordination among special educators, paraprofessionals, general educators, and leaders. Coordination is challenged by differing understandings of students’ needs, the division of responsibilities for meeting those needs, and the resources necessary to meet them, resulting in tensions that special educators must navigate to effectively serve students. A second qualitative analysis found that the tensions experienced by special educators depended on their conceptions of students’ disabilities. Those who viewed disabilities as problems to be fixed tended to experience tensions over whether they could place students in separate classrooms, whereas those who viewed students as whole human beings with mental health support needs tended to experience tensions over their students’ belonging in the broader school community. Further, they reported navigating these tensions differently depending on how they were positioned in their schools’ social contexts. Those who were positioned as experts with strong social relationships in their school were able to advocate for change in how they and their students were treated, whereas those who were isolated tended to resolve tensions by making changes internal to their own classroom.
• A qualitative analysis of administrators’ perspectives found that their understanding of students’ disabilities informed their vision for the program and the responsibilities they took on for supporting the program. For example, administrators who viewed students’ disabilities as caused by parents focused on engaging with parents. Results indicate the importance of supporting administrators to understand the nature and roots of students’ difficulties.
• The time use study found that special educators report spending approximately 40% of their time on instruction, that they are multitasking about 60% of the time, and that their time use is highly variable across days. In addition, they experienced more positive affect when engaged with students in non-disciplinary activities and more negative affect when engaged with discipline. Effects were partially explained by their perceptions of the importance of the activity and their success in doing it, implying leaders could foster more positive affect by communicating the importance of all aspects of their work and drawing attention to successes.
• Across multiple qualitative datasets, analyses found that gendered discourse about teachers’ care for students acted a barrier to improving working conditions. In essence, discourse about teaching as the work of maternal women who teach out of love serves to absolve leaders of responsibility for addressing poor working conditions instead transferring that responsibility onto individual teachers who are expected to sacrifice their own well-being.