Center for Social Development and Education Blog

April 3, 2023
by Center for Social Development and Education
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Dear Research Diary: Why use qualitative analysis?

Breaking down the experiences of real people into numbers and statistics can tell an incomplete story. While quantitative analysis requires a preexisting theory of a phenomenon, qualitative methods allow researchers to explore new theories by understanding phenomena in the context they occur (Nowell and Albrecht, 2019). Researchers do this by seeking out and documenting the experiences of those involved. They then methodically look for patterns and similarities, sorting them into coherent themes and noting the associations between them. This rigorous process is often used in social science research to allow researchers to draw conclusions about social behavior (Aspers and Corte, 2019).

Other disciplines are increasingly turning to qualitative analysis to gain further insight into quantitative findings (Raskind et al., 2019). In the medical field, qualitative analysis can be used to ‘explore the attitudes and beliefs of patients and practitioners, and how evidence-based treatments are turned into practice’ (Green et al., 1998). In a study on people with asthma, qualitative interviews revealed that many patients do not always engage in the prescribed treatment due to differences between the practitioners’ and patients’ values. The authors found that, “[patients] weigh up the perceived costs and benefits of the medicine offered in accordance with desired outcomes which may not correspond to those planned by the health professional.” While quantitative analysis tells practitioners which treatments are most effective, qualitative analysis helps medical practitioners understand evidence-based treatments from the patient’s perspective. Accounting for that perspective can lead to greater patient engagement with effective treatments (Adams et al., 1997).

Qualitative analysis helps fill in the details to “give voice to people’s lived experiences” (Raskind et al., 2019). It humanizes research by employing a variety of methodological tools grounded in epistemological theories that create a framework through which to view the phenomena. It’s one thing to describe qualitative research but another entirely to carry it out, so why don’t we show the process instead?

Our new blog series aims to do just that as it follows the project development of a paper about what it means to coach a Unified Sports team. In the next blogs, you can watch this qualitative research process at work in real time! Follow along as the next entry in my research diary will cover how we selected the research topic and decided which data to use.

By Nathan Barrett, Research Assistant at the Center for Social Development and Education

March 20, 2023
by Center for Social Development and Education
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Coaches’ Reflections on Unified UIL Sports

Last summer, the CSDE collaborated with Special Olympics Texas to evaluate the Unified UIL Track and Field program, an inclusive sports team where players with and without disabilities practice and compete together. From 115 interviews with players, coaches, and school administrators, we learned about what it was like to be a part of a Unified program, and what it meant for the school to have a Unified sports team.

Coaches overwhelmingly expressed that compared to traditional Special Olympics the Unified sports team felt like a truly competitive track team. One coach reflected, ““I got to be a coach instead of just a mentor.” For many athletes, Unified Track was an opportunity to experience competition. When reflecting on players’ growth over the season, another coach said, “He kind of figured out what it’s like to compete, as well. Instead of, ‘I’m just running to run,’ to, ‘I’m running to beat you,’ and then pretty soon, every day at practice, he was racing somebody.” Furthermore, competition helped students to learn skills needed after high school. “[At higher] intensity, you got to be organized, you got to be structured, you got to have discipline. Well, for [the players] to function in society, they got to be organized, they got to have discipline,” another coach explained. It was clear to coaches that Unified sports provided players with the same competitive experience as non-inclusive sports. By making competitive experiences accessible, more students could gain skills to prepare them for other competitive areas of their life.

Ultimately, coaches wanted to create a supportive, unified team culture by encouraging partners to develop positive relationships with their peers with disabilities. As one coach said, “We would kind of coach [the partners] on how to talk to the [athletes], on how to say it the correct way to make sure they will understand it. And then after a few weeks…we were able to totally fade out of the conversation and let them just really take those roles of leadership.” These interactions often had a big impact on partners. One coach explained, “Especially [the partners], it was, for them, eye openers because they came in thinking the [athletes] were one way, and then as they got to know them, it was like, ‘Oh, wow, you’re different from me, but not as different from me.’” In forming these relationships, partners deepened their understanding of disability, often through unlearning their previous misconceptions.

Overall, the positive experiences with Unified sports gave students the normative experience of participating in a competitive sport. It also helped dispel the stigma around disability by bringing students together and showing that all players can meaningfully contribute to competitive sports team. One coach remarked, “[The players] just thought they were going to have fun and get to do a few track meets and have some fun traveling and stuff. And it ended up turning into something so much more and…I think it changed all of us for the better.”

– By Nathan Barrett, Research Assistant at the Center for Social Development and Education

March 6, 2023
by Center for Social Development and Education
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Building a Qualitative Archive in QDA Miner

*A word cloud representing the frequency of key word occurrence in the archive.*

A few years ago, researchers at CSDE began the process of creating a qualitative archive that encompassed all interviews and focus groups conducted throughout the Unified Champion Schools (UCS) Evaluation, which began in 2008. The goal was to bring together the perspectives of those variously involved with UCS to gain a more holistic and longitudinal perspective. By quickly analyzing all 1,700 of our transcripts (totaling almost 4 million words), the software allows us to see broader trends before beginning an in-depth qualitative analysis. Now that the archive is complete, we’re looking back at how we built it and what we learned along the way!

To start, we began an arduous process of reading each transcript and demarcating any text said by the interviewer. By bracketing the interviewer’s questions, we essentially created two archives at once: one reflecting the kinds of questions and themes that were prevalent across projects and years and another that reflects the topics that participants were passionate about discussing. This feature allows us to not only analyze trends across participant interviews, but also to evaluate our own research practices and better understand any thematic biases caused by an interviewer emphasis.

Once the transcripts were ready, we discussed which variables they would have and how those variables would enhance our analysis. Some variables, like school name, grade level, or participant role were recorded manually next to the transcript’s file name in Excel. This allowed QDA Miner to attach the variables to the transcripts as we imported them. We also included several variables from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) by linking them through each school’s identification number. These variables ranged from the number of students receiving free and reduced lunch to the locale classification of the school (city, suburb, town, etc.). As NCES releases new data, we will be able to update the archive by adding new variables linked to the school ID. Analysis using these variables allows us to compare between the characteristics of a school and the occurrence of various themes.

Together, the transcripts and variables illustrate trends in key word frequency and occurrence across participant roles, years, locations, and more. Using the archive we can quickly see the most common topics from a certain project, stakeholder, or locale and how participants related them to each other. Stay tuned to see how we used the archive for the annual UCS evaluation and plans for future research!

– By Anika Lanser, Research Assistant at the Center for Social Development and Education

February 20, 2023
by Center for Social Development and Education
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What are school psychologists?

Although school psychologists are traditionally associated with special education eligibility, their role has expanded in recent decades to encompass a broad range of services that “help children and youth succeed academically, socially, behaviorally, and emotionally.” School psychologists provide services across ten domains which can be distilled into intervention, assessment, and consultation.

Direct intervention involves a school psychologist providing first-hand academic or mental-health services to a student or group of students. Assessment is the process of collecting data to make programming decisions for individual students, groups of students, or school-wide systems. Consultation trains staff in order to increase their capacity to address student needs on their own. Importantly, all school psychological services are informed by a social justice lens, through which school psychologists work to “ensure the protection of the educational rights, opportunities, and well-being of all children, especially those whose voices have been muted, identities obscured, or needs ignored.”

School psychologists provide services to all students, including those with disabilities. Often, school psychologists determine if a student has an educational disability that qualifies them for special education services. This process is critical in balancing (a) providing adequate supports to students with disabilities while (b) ensuring that students are not inappropriately identified for special education. Regardless of eligibility, school psychologists provide interventions and supports for all students, including behavior plans, small group interventions, and counseling support. School psychologists also consult on universal curriculum that can be implemented in schools, which can impact school-wide norms related to inclusivity.

Through this continuum of services, school psychologists help ensure that students with disabilities (regardless of special education status) are adequately supported while being embedded in the social fabric of their school. For more information about school psychologists and the crucial role they play in schools, click here!

– By Staci Ballard, Graduate Assistant at the Center for Social Development and Education

February 6, 2023
by Center for Social Development and Education
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Classroom Strategies for Supporting Students with Disabilities

As schools work to be more inclusive and move away from isolated special education, teachers are working to increase access within their classrooms by creating academic accommodations and ensuring the structures and systems of their classes provide different ways for students to engage. Creating personalized academic accommodations and support systems that give students the tools they need to meaningfully participate in classrooms is one of the most important things teachers can do to contribute to inclusion efforts in their schools. See below for some strategies teachers can use to support students with disabilities.

1. Use visual aids

Visuals are an important aspect of teaching young children, especially those with disabilities. Visual aids, such as picture-daily-schedules, stickers and cards can be included in daily classroom activities and routines. When additional structure is needed for activities that require multitasking, using visuals to provide information for each task can help children succeed.

2. Give directions clearly and concisely

Children with disabilities often have difficulty understanding instructions or feel overwhelmed if asked to do too many things at once, which can make it harder for them to participate. When giving directions, using direct language and giving no more than 2 steps at a time can help students to successfully execute the task. Non-verbal cues, such as gestures or facial expressions, may not make sense to some children with disabilities. Teachers are encouraged to practice being as direct and clear as possible.

3. Help students manage their time and transitions between activities

In between classes, activities and events, 2-minute or 5-minute transition warnings can support students in making the most of their time. A timer students can clearly see shows how long each activity or event will take, helping to make both the schedule of the activity and expectations clearer for students. This also helps students to build time management skills and experience consistency and predictability in classroom routines.

4. Support students in managing their sensory stimulation

Some children with disabilities are overwhelmed easily by loud or bright stimuli and may respond by covering their eyes or ears. Sensory activities typically involve over- or under- sensitivities to sounds, light, touch, tastes, smells, pain and other stimuli. Having access to sensory tools, such as noise cancelling headphones can help them to regulate and return to class.

5. Celebrate students for meeting and exceeding expectations

Lastly, use positive reinforcement for good behavior. It is important to reward good behavior, rather than focusing on negative actions. When the child receives attention and other benefits from good behavior, this behavior is much more likely to happen and become habitual. Some examples of positive reinforcement include clapping and cheering, giving a high five, a hug or a thumbs up, and offering a special reward or extra privileges.

– By Esi Coro, Graduate Assistant at the Center for Social Development and Education

January 23, 2023
by Center for Social Development and Education
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Three Ways to Develop Youth Leadership Skills in Youth with Disabilities

Do you work with kids with disabilities or interact with them on a regular basis? Maybe you are a special education teacher or a camp counselor. Maybe you are the parent of a Gen Z or Gen Alpha adolescent with an intellectual disability. In any youth-serving role, it is important to support young people with disabilities in developing leadership skills so they can interact appropriately with others, advocate for themselves and others, and, ultimately, be successful once they leave school and enter the community.

For the past ten years, I have been researching school social inclusion interventions, particularly youth leadership in K-12 schools. This includes how adults view leadership roles and opportunities for youth, how the youth themselves think and feel about being a leader, and even what parents see or support at home. From this work, I make three recommendations to adults serving adolescents with intellectual or developmental disability and looking to support or enhance their development as a leader:

Teach skills adolescents associate with leadership

One of the best ways we can support our youth in developing strong leadership skills is to teach them skills in the areas they associate with being a leader. Over the years adolescents have attributed a leader, above all, as someone who is helpful, but also someone who sets positive examples, is responsive to events happening in their environment, and someone who is respectful. Therefore, skills such as empathy, compassion, respect, responsibility, advocacy, and mentorship are skills that could teach adolescents how to be the type of leader they might aspire to be. Focusing on these areas will better engage youth in developing skills over the long term because they understand and value what they are working on in a personally relevant way, not learning something an adult told them to do. Cooperative learning activities that put students with intellectual disability alongside peers to strengthen these skills are a great place to start!

Expand our definition of what a leadership role is

While theories of leadership among adults emphasize specific characteristics necessary for being a leader, youth views on leadership often differ from these perspectives as youth tend to put less importance on individual traits and focus more on the idea that anyone can be a leader at any given moment (Mortenson et al., 2014). Furthermore, youth are more apt to define leaders as positive role models, while adults put more emphasis on specific characteristics and talents such as responsibility and communication skills (Culp & Kohlhagen, 2000). Thus, a broader definition of what a leadership role is may help more youth, such as those with intellectual disability, feel they can be a leader. Students with intellectual disability may not “fit” into traditional leadership contexts (such as a club president), and, more importantly, these may not be the roles that best utilize their strengths among their peers. By cultivating a broader mindset of youth leadership, we can make room for non-traditional leadership roles in schools and after school programs to support all students and develop diverse youth leaders for tomorrow.

Provide inclusive youth leadership opportunities

One of the most successful ways I have observed schools developing youth leadership skills is by creating inclusive programs where students with and without intellectual disability come together to share a leadership role and co-lead events or activities. Students with and without intellectual disability have observed that this inclusive environment provides a safe space to learn new leadership skills and provides learning opportunities they would not otherwise have. For students without intellectual disability this could look like mentoring a peer with intellectual disability, and for students with intellectual disability this could include teaching others about disability and supportive ways to interact.

Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools has been facilitating inclusive youth leadership opportunities from preschool to college since 2008 and has helpful resources to get you started or support your ongoing efforts.

By Holly Jacobs, Director of Evaluation at the Center for Social Development and Education

January 9, 2023
by Center for Social Development and Education
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Interscholastic Unified Track & Field: A Coach’s View

*Coach Kami Dodds celebrating a student’s win in an Interscholastic Unified track race.*

The gun goes off for a traditional Special Olympics race and everyone cheers the athletes on as they sprint for the finish line. When the same gun goes off for a Unified race, the crowd tears up as the athletes and their partners race for the finish line together. That same gun goes off once more, for an Interscholastic Unified race and partners cross the finish line before athletes as athletes cross before partners.

Wait, what? How can this be right? This isn’t unified! They’re supposed to be together in this! Is this even fair? They’re stealing the spotlight! Many spectators may have had these same thoughts as the Interscholastic Unified events continued to unfold. Is this really what’s best for the athletes? Yes, it absolutely is. I challenge you to look deeper with me at what is truly going on in this division.

As Special Olympic coaches, we train our athletes to be competitors. They follow rules, practice for weeks for each event and are held accountable on and off the playing field. They are legitimate athletes, in every sense of the word, regardless of their abilities. Their Unified partners are no different. They, too, have rules, train alongside them and are legitimate athletes. Under Interscholastic Unified, together, they form a team – a competitive team sanctioned by the UIL. Iron sharpening iron. Their job is to compete their hearts out for each other, to honor their partnership by performing to the best of their abilities. This is true unity, inclusion and respect. It is not about one dulling their sparkle to give the other more shine, rather, it is about both competitors shining together, contributing to the team in their own right.

*Coach Kami Dodds and the Eula Pirates ’22 Unified Interscholastic Track Team.*

As legitimate competitors, they know that there is a winner and loser in any competition. These teams sign up to compete anyway. They train to do their best and try to win. True competitors do not want victories handed to them, they want to earn them. Interscholastic Unified track and field is about earning it – every step, throw and jump of the way. The only way for them to earn it is to push each other to be the best they can be; for both athlete and partner to leave it all on the track, in the ring, in the pit.

Are traditional Special Olympics and Unified competitions going away? No, never. Each division serves its own unique purpose for various levels of athletes and partners. Interscholastic Unified is a new, additional division for those athletes and partners who desire to take it just one more step further in search of their competitive greatness. This new division will no doubt push teams to new heights and give competitors of all abilities the legitimacy and validity that they have always deserved. Stay tuned…you’re not going to want to miss this.

By Kami Dodds, Head Coach/Head of Delegation for the Eula Pirates

December 23, 2022
by Center for Social Development and Education
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See you in 2023!

The Center for Social Development and Education will be closed for the winter holidays. Blog posts will resume in January of 2023. We wish a joyful new year to all our readers!

December 12, 2022
by Center for Social Development and Education
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Shifting Disability Terminology

As growing social awareness of the systemic injustices perpetuated by our rhetoric prompt changes in discourse and terminology, the way we discuss disability is changing. Following reflections on language’s power in shaping our perceptions, there are many words in the English lexicon once used to clinically describe disability that have since been disavowed. Some of these words, such as “lame” or “dumb,” have been distanced from their history and absorbed into colloquial use. For other words, the association with disability has deepened to the point that they have become hate speech. This is particularly true for the r-word, something we have studied here at the Center for Development and Social Education.

The use of the r-word in social settings, especially schools, perpetuates harmful stigma around disability. Now, some students are intervening when they hear their peers using the word, acknowledging and addressing its social power head on. As we’ve seen the harm that comes from using the r-word in research, we’ve similarly acknowledged the weight language carries and reflected on how we speak about disability.

Similar shifts in language are occurring now in response to advocacy from the disability community and shifts in the dominant understanding of disability. For instance, in education and related research fields, special education students have become students with disabilities. This People First Language is often used by researchers and educators who want to emphasize the participant’s primary identity as a student, and who do not want students to feel labeled by their disability.

However, within the disability community, many people identify as disabled. They argue that this rhetorical choice centers the ways that disability informs their identity and experiences, while also acknowledging its social constructedness. Some scholars have opted to use the term dis/abled to emphasize the way people are disabled by societal structures and put the onus for necessary change on society rather than the individual. These rhetorical shifts draw on the power of language with intention, using the terminology itself to put the latest conversation around disability justice into practice.

By Anika Lanser, Research Assistant at the Center for Social Development and Education

November 28, 2022
by Center for Social Development and Education
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Learning Loss During School Breaks

From New Zealand to Malawi, the United Kingdom (UK) to the United States (USA), Kindergarten to College, learning loss over school breaks is a well-documented phenomenon. Students either forget some of what they learned during the previous school year or their learning stagnates. This “summer slide”, “learning loss”, or “knowledge decay” is especially impactful for students from low socioeconomic status (SES) households. Students from low socioeconomic status households generally come into kindergarten academically behind their peers, an educational gap that grows each year. A study by Shinwell & Defeyter (2017) found that in the USA

The repercussions of differing levels of achievement before even starting school, combined with successive summers of loss may compound the educational attainment gap between children of high and low SES, and this gap in achievement reverberates, not just throughout their educational career but throughout the life course of pupils.

Shinwell and Defeyter (2017) also found that in the UK,

regardless of SES, all children show losses in maths computation and spelling skills. Losses in maths equate to around 1.8 months of lost learning, and losses in spelling equate to approximately 4 months’ loss of skills. A meta-analysis showed that higher SES children gained in reading while lower SES children lost skills in reading but both groups lost skills in comprehension, with lower SES children losing more or, at best, tread water, making gains some summers and losing in others.

Shinwell and Defeyter (2017) also found that, in Germany “Students gained skills when school was in session, but stalled or lost skills in writing and reading comprehension over the summer”. Meyer, Yao, & Kane (2020) found that knowledge decay and stagnation were present in New Zealand despite relatively short summer breaks, meaning the length of the break may not have much impact on the amount of learning loss. Dills, Hernández-Julián, and Rotthoff (2016) found that this loss occurs at the university level as well where students taking successive courses experienced less learning loss when taking the class in fall and spring rather than in spring and then fall, but that learning loss occurred regardless of the length of the break. Shinwell and Defeyter (2017) also found that in New Zealand “students from minority ethnic groups showed the greatest drops… At the school level, lower-income schools, which were overrepresented by ethnic minority students, were also associated with a greater summer drop even after accounting for ethnicity”. This demonstrates that students across the world are experiencing knowledge decay during school breaks, exacerbated by societal disadvantages due to ethnicity and SES. Students and families would be advised to continue working on skills learned during the school year over school breaks.

With winter break fast approaching students should continue reading, practicing math, and writing daily. These skills are part of our everyday lives and can be practiced through following a recipe with family to practice math and reading, writing a letter or email to loved ones, or reading books while students have free time over the break. Keeping brains engaged and ready over break is one way to support students in transitioning back to the classroom!

By Afrina Rohani, Graduate Assistant at the Center for Social Development and Education