Transforming Schools from the Ground-Up with Local Stakeholders: Implementing Learning Lab for Inclusion and Systemic Transformation at a Middle School

Bal, Aydın; Afacan, Kemal; Çakır, Halil İbrahim

doi:10.1007/s10780-019-09353-5

Cited by 17 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Important in the building process is including a diverse community with educational stakeholders from a range of backgrounds. In particular, school counselors should center the voices of students and families as experts and problem-solvers in the building process (Bal et al, 2019; Bryan et al, 2022). Further, as a part of this process, discussion of the following questions (Mayes, 2021) would be important: (a) What do we need in place to love and protect students?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Antiracist Framework for Evidence-Informed School Counseling Practice

Mayes

Byrd

2022

Professional School Counseling

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

School counselors are charged with creating comprehensive school counseling programs that recognize and affirm the wholeness and humanness of students, families, and their communities (Holcomb-McCoy, C., Mayes, R. D., Cheatham, C., Sharp, S., and Savitz-Romer, M. (2020). Antiracist school counseling: A call to action [webinar]. Center for Postsecondary Readiness and Success, American University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEjNaB2L3Vc ). However, despite our best efforts, many school environments operate in ways that harm BIPOC students (Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press). School counselors are uniquely positioned to be leaders in antiracist efforts and can influence a shift in school culture by using evidence-based practices across academic, career, and social/emotional domains. This conceptual article has four primary goals: (a) provide a working definition of antiracist school counseling; (b) outline key components of developing a critical consciousness as a foundation to antiracist school counseling practice; (c) describe a framework for engaging in evidence-informed, antiracist practice as a part of MTSS to support strategies that interrupt and dismantle harmful school policies/practices across all domains of service; and (d) provide recommendations for school counselors and school counselor educators who are committing to antiracist practice.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Antiracist Framework for Evidence-Informed School Counseling Practice

Mayes

Byrd

2022

Professional School Counseling

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In addition to bidirectional communication, schools can empower parents and other stakeholders to collaborate in school-based decision-making by establishing structures for shared governance (Garbacz, 2020). For example, Bal et al (2019) transformed a school’s decision-making process by engaging parents, school staff, and community members in collaborative systems-level change. Specifically, Bal et al created a schoolwide team that was inclusive of all voices so they could engage in problem-solving together.…”

Section: Schoolwide Approaches To Set the Context For Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing Parent Collaboration in the Implementation of Effective Practices

Garbacz¹,

Godfrey²,

Rowe³

et al. 2022

TEACHING Exceptional Children

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…To transform the dysfunctional system where youth from nondominant communities experience exclusive governing biopolitical technology operated through hyper-punishment (Foucault, 1995), there is a need to create a "subaltern counter public sphere" in which "members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter discourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs" (Fraser, 1990, p. 67). Learning Lab encourages local stakeholders to become change actors by collaboratively analyzing systemic contradictions and envisioning and redesigning new conceptions, tools, and practices that generate qualitative transformation in the dysfunctional system (Bal et al, 2018;Bal, Afacan, & Cakir, 2019).…”

Section: Transformative Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Through collective epistemic inquiry into systemic breakdowns in the existing system and collaborative design endeavors that were mediated through multiple stimulations, members experienced expansive forms of learning, including forming an inclusive problem-solving group, questioning current practices, analyzing systemic contradictions, modeling a new behavioral system of support, examining dynamics and feasibility of the new model, developing implementation strategies, and reflecting on problem-solving processes. The specific analysis of expansive learning actions that the Rogoff Learning Lab members experienced is presented elsewhere (see Bal, Afacan, & Cakir, 2019).…”

Section: Design Features Of the Learning Lab Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Expanding Transformative Agency: Learning Lab as a Social Change Intervention for Racial Equity in School Discipline

Bal

Çakır

et al. 2021

Teachers College Record

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background In the United States, students of color are more likely to receive disciplinary exclusion compared with their White peers. The racial disproportionality in exclusionary school discipline (e.g., office discipline referrals and suspension) marginalizes students from nondominant communities and further aggravates inequalities in academic, social, and behavioral outcomes. As a socially, historically, and geographically situated inequity issue, addressing racial disparities in disciplinary outcomes requires a transformative experiment in which local stakeholders can engage in situated problem identification and problem-solving efforts in response to their specific needs, goals, and local dynamics. Purpose of Study This study examined how Learning Lab, an inclusive, collaborative problem-solving process, created a collaborative problem-solving space wherein school stakeholders exercised their collective, transformative agency to bring about a qualitative transformation in the school discipline system at an urban middle school for the creation of culturally responsive and equity-oriented learning environments for all students. Setting The research took place at Rogoff Middle School in Wisconsin, which has historically served students from urban, low-income families. The school community struggled with the overrepresentation of Black students in exclusionary school discipline. Participants Learning Lab comprised 14 members. Three parents and 11 school staff— administrators, teachers, social workers, an after-school coordinator, and a parent/paraprofessional working in a special education classroom—participated in the Learning Lab. Research Design This study used the Learning Lab intervention, taking place at an urban middle school between November 2012 and May 2014, as an instrumental case to explore how the participatory, design-based intervention transformed a schoolwide behavioral support system. Data collected from 14 meetings include observations, ethnographic field notes, school disciplinary data, and photos. All meetings were video recorded and transcribed, then analyzed using a transformative agency framework. Findings/Results With the aim of organizing inclusive problem-solving activities for shared, collaborative future-making learning experiences, the Learning Lab encouraged local stakeholders to exercise their collective, transformative agency in order to produce locally meaningful and emancipatory knowledge aimed at reshaping a dysfunctional, punitive system that historically has yielded racial injustice in school discipline. Conclusions/Recommendations As a community-driven, scaled-down design process, Learning Lab can be a powerful leadership tool for school leaders to unite school stakeholders by building authentic school–family–community partnerships and leveraging expertise, experiences, and ingenuity for the development of locally optimized solutions to inequity.

show abstract

Transforming Schools from the Ground-Up with Local Stakeholders: Implementing Learning Lab for Inclusion and Systemic Transformation at a Middle School

Cited by 17 publications

References 29 publications

An Antiracist Framework for Evidence-Informed School Counseling Practice

An Antiracist Framework for Evidence-Informed School Counseling Practice

Increasing Parent Collaboration in the Implementation of Effective Practices

Expanding Transformative Agency: Learning Lab as a Social Change Intervention for Racial Equity in School Discipline

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About