Programmatic Segregation: Right Under Our Noses!

I’m sitting here in Park City, Utah preparing to attend my brother in law's wedding this afternoon. But, I wanted to sneak out this morning to update you on our faculty meeting last week and the most recent issue related to the special education program at the University of Idaho…

During our first day of faculty meetings I was pulled aside by the SPED program coordinator to tell me that the College was proposing to move the faculty in Special Education to new offices on the 2^nd floor. At the present time, the SPED faculty is up on the 4^th floor with the faculty from the Curriculum and Instruction Dept. (meaning regular ed folks). The decision to move the SPED program, after some inquiries, came from the C&I Department who wanted more space for “their people”. There was no consultation with the SPED faculty.

The argument that we got from “leadership”, was that it was a nice space, they would provide new paint, and furniture, but it still amounts to segregation of the “disability folks”. The literature in teacher preparation, higher ed policy, and even the report from our newly convened Teacher Education Task Force here at the University of Idaho have identified the need for more interaction and infusion of special education content into the general education teacher preparation programs, but at the same time they want to move us to a different part of the building and remove us from the setting that would help to facilitate collaboration and curricular infusion.

It’s funny that this is happening right now, because this is exactly the type of phenomenon that I am researching. I am actually going to present my work on the segregation of teacher preparation programs at the Royal Geographic Society later this summer in London. I find it so ironic that it’s happening right here under my nose as I prepare this manuscript! Its picture perfect, although not surprising. This happens so often in universities, and no one questions it. No one even seems to stop and consider the far-reaching effects of simple geographic separation on the intellectual geography of higher education. Perhaps it’s a product of our American mindset. We are a people who have very few ties to “place”. We assume that we can thrive anywhere with anyone and neglect the effects of the environment in which we choose to work and live. More on this idea later…

Anyway, I think I might post my RGS paper here piecemeal and see what feedback I get. So to begin with, here’s the premise of the RGS paper I’ll be presenting in August. I think you’ll also find it terribly ironic:

Despite past and current legislation, children with disabilities in U.S. schools continue to find themselves segregated from the general education classroom and separated from their peers. Although there is a large body of research that supports breaking down these literal and figurative barriers to the general education classroom, teachers in the U.S. school system have not been able to fully embrace the idea and practice of inclusive education. Inclusion is a concept that has not been fully embraced by teachers precisely because the concept of inclusion has not been fully embraced by the institutions of higher education that train our teachers. IDEA 2004 requires that students with special needs should be educated in the regular education classroom “to the maximum extent appropriate”, but a significant amount of research has shown that a majority of general education teachers feel unprepared to deal with students with disabilities. This pattern indicates that there is a fundamental mismatch between the current special education policy and the structure of teacher preparation programs. The root of this problem lies within our institutions of higher education that, for the most part, still segregate teacher preparation programs for general education and special education teachers. Higher education is an arena where there is still widespread institutional discrimination against individuals with disabilities, and there is a strong tendency to segregate and compartmentalize university departments that specialize in disability-related content. This paper examines this institutional discrimination/segregation at institutions of higher education and highlights the need to integrate teacher preparation programs if inclusion is to become more widely accepted in our schools.