The purpose of this grounded theory (GT) study was to generate an understanding and explanation of the processes related to the special education referral and assignment of African American students as perceived by teachers and parents in a public elementary school district located in southwestern United States. The points of views of parents and teachers enabled the researcher to develop a theory regarding the overrepresentation of African American students in special education. The current research will contribute to the existing knowledge of overrepresentation and disproportionality. The study involved the collection of data from a local context.
Research questions for this study:
1. What are parents’ perceptions of the referral practices used when African American students are referred and assigned to special education and how do these practices affect the composition of special education enrollment?
2. What are teachers’ perceptions of the referral practices used when African American students are referred and assigned to special education and how do these practices affect the composition of special education enrollment?
This chapter will include a discussion of the interpretation of the data and a summary of the participant setting and demographics, the data collection and analysis processes. Next I will show evidence of trustworthiness. Finally, the results of the data analysis and the chapter summary will be presented.
Setting/Demographics
As far as I know, no large scale reforms in the district had been implemented which would influence any of the participant attitudes, responses or experiences regarding their responses to the interviews. After participants were identified I began data collection on February 29, 2016. I was able to meet with the teachers after school hours in their classrooms. The focus group which consisted of Parents of the referred students in the district met in a conference room located on the school campus.
Data gathering consisted of face-to-face use of semi-structured in-depth audio-recorded interviews with key informants representing regular and special education teachers and a parent focus group. The target populations for the research studies focus group were parents of African-American students in first through eighth grade who has a child that was recommended or referred to special education services. The second criterion for parental participation was that their child was accepted and enrolled in a special education program.
The key informants consisted of approximately nine representatives of both special education and general education teachers. It was understood that while representing the two major roles involved with the referral process, this sample was not representative of any team, locale, or time beyond the selected district during the current school year.
Although I have no awareness of any extenuating or personal circumstances that may have affected the participants during data collection for this study, a reasonable conclusion is that the participants would not have agreed to participate if they were experiencing undue stresses during the time of recruitment. As a result, it was assumed that extenuating circumstances did not affect the data collected which made for no additional considerations while interpreting the data.
This study was conducted in the a School District, located in an urban area of Southern Arizona. The participants included; nine Informants, regular and special education teachers’ male and female. Two participants were Hispanic, and 7 participants were African American The Caucasion participant cancelled our meeting. All Teachers have worked in the District for more than 7 years, considered highly qualified, and have experiences referring students to special education in the district. The focus group consisted of six parents; 2 male and 4 female parents. All were parents of students that had been referred and assigned to special education.
Data Collection
Focus group discussions with African American parents involved up to six participants, lasted between 60 and 90 minutes, and guided by the researcher-produced parent focus group guide (Appendix F). This guide was structured around the study’s research questions and includes a series of discussion prompts designed to obtain data regarding parents’ perspectives and experiences of the special education referral process for their children. The discussions were held in a conference room located at one of the schools in the district. With permission of the participants, data was gathered using a digital audio recorder and note taking. The collection of data was followed strictly from the data collection process described in chapter 3, with no unexpected occurrances during data collection. Focus group data were collected via preliminary phone call to principals providing them with a draft of parent invitation which they decided to send out to parents in their school. I received nine phone calls of interested participants. I then followed up with phone calls lasting 5 minutes to schedule the focus group interview. The face-to-face focus group interview lasted 90 minutes. The interviews were conducted in a conference room on the school campus. All data were recorded by memos and voice recorder.
Teacher interview data was collected via phone call to set up face-to-face interview. The face-to face interview lasted from 30 to 45 minutes each and followed the researcher-produced semi-structured interview guide (Appendix G). With permission of the participants, data was gathered using a digital audio recorder and note taking.
Data Analysis
As noted in chapter 3 Nvivo 11 was used to help with my data analysis. In grounded theory, theoretical explanations are scaffolded by identifying the phenomena in terms of the origin of the conditions and circumstances, how they are communicated through action/interaction, the consequences that may arise from the effects from them, and the variations of the qualifiers (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). This requires all participants to have firsthand experience of the phenomenon being studied.
After importing the transcribed data in the Nvivo 11 program, I was allowed to group words or sentences into categories using common topics, terms and phrases then organizing the categories by patterns and presenting the data into themes. I used the program to compare data manually for comparative purposes. First coding three words then at the sentences level. I then grouped the sentences into categories identifying patterns of subthemes, ultimately developing overarching themes.
For example, I used the code “no training” for reports in which participants referred to teachers’ student referral experience and grouped them in the category of “Teacher understanding the referral process”. The following statements are other examples for this category:
• “As a classroom teacher, I did not receive formal training in the discipline of special education”. (Participant 1)
• “The “training” provided all seemed more on the surface rather than in depth”. (Participant 2)
• “On the job training”. (Participant 3)
• “As a classroom teacher, I did not receive formal training in the discipline of special education” (Participant 4).
I used the code “African American” for statements in which participants were asked to describe the ethnicity of students they felt were most frequently referred to special education. The following categories emerged:
• “Hispanic and African American (mostly males)” (Participant 2)
• “The majority of the students presently referred for special education are Hispanic and African Americans”. (Participant 3)
• “The majority ethnic group reflected in our Special Needs classes has been African Americans and Hispanics”. (Participant 4)
• “African American race is overpopulated in the programs” (Participant 6).
Finally, other themes that were derived included …..
These themes are discussed in more detail in the Results section.
Evidence of Trustworthiness
From the standpoint of validity, it was imperative to describe how the results were produced. The analysis and conclusion should be clear and easily followed by the reader. (Schreiber, 2012). The validity of this study was based on four criteria: credibility, transferability, conformability, and dependability. I demonstrated Dependability in the consistency of data collected and analyzed and not deviating from the plan during implementation. Other researchers are able to confirm my study through the data’s accurateness and relevance of my research methods. I avoided biasness in my data collection and data analysis. Transferability refers to the potential to forecast a phenomenon. It depends on the data that results can be generalized or transferred to new surroundings or a group. Finally, credibility was one of the most significant details in forming trustworthiness. Triangulation supports credibility by utilizing different methods such as individual interviews, wide range informants, focus groups, and observation to record accurately the phenomena (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Polit & Beck, 2012).
Qualitative researchers use triangulation to ensure qualitative validity. Triangulation checks and establishes validity by analyzing a research question from multiple perspectives to arrive at consistency between data sources or approaches. The methods used in this study are open-ended unstructured interviews with parents, key informants, and the use of district data. The rationale for utilizing qualitative research for this study was to describe and understand the phenomenon of interest directly from those experienced within the inner workings of the educational system pertaining to the referral process of African American students into special education classes. It was critical that this study created a level of trustworthiness of its’ statements (Bailey, 2007).
Memos were used as a way of theorizing and commenting as you go about coding and the general development of the analytical framework. It was a strategy used to increase trustworthiness. Memos are notes about the data set. Glaser defines memos as the “theorizing write-up of ideas about codes and their relationships as they strike the analyst while coding, it can be a sentence, a paragraph or a few pages…it exhausts the analyst’s momentary ideation based on data with perhaps a little conceptual elaboration”. (Glaser 1978: 83-4)
This researcher used three approaches to increasing the study’s trustworthiness, 1) members check, participants received a copy of the transcripts of the face-to-face interviews to review to make sure their meaning was supported and reflected in the study. 2) Debriefing entailed feedback from at least 3 individuals that are knowledgeable about the study and can offer plausible and authentic feedback making certain the interpretation of the data was valid. Researcher biases were a critical area of the study because the researcher was the primary instrument, interviews, observations and analysis were filtered through the researcher’s perspectives; therefore, the interpretation of all participants’ constructions interact with the construction of the phenomenon of the researcher that was under study (Merriam, 1998). The researcher’s awareness of any biases that could affect the outcome of the study was critical.
Results
Summary
The Grounded theory approach was most appropriate for this study because the study focuses on the subjects’ perceptions of the referral processes of African Americans students to special education. The goal of this study was to explore the processes that lead to overrepresentation of African American students in special education. Grounded theory research was not tied to any pre-existing theory. The theories are usually new and have the possibility of creative revelations. (Charmez, 2009).
Creswell (2007) outlined constant comparative methodology as a means of taking information from results collected and correlating it to emerging categories. This grounded study followed the constant comparative method by analyzing data provided by a focus group and data received from key informants’ face-to-face interviews. In this way, the study supported the development of a theory of how the referral process is connected to overrepresentation of African American students in special education. The most important goal to attain from the interviewees was information on their experiences through the course of their children’s referral process to special education. The researcher coded all information from a focus group and face-to-face interviews from key informants. This process was followed by transcribing the interviews into text. As the data was coded and the connections are developed, categories emerged into themes until a theory was established. Chapter 5 consisted of the conclusion, recommendations and the implication for social change.
Chapter 5
Introduction
The purpose of this grounded theory research study was to explore the processes that lead to overrepresentation of African American students in special education. The study explored parental perception, institutional biases and the referral process of the Roosevelt School District. I guided semi-structured face-to-face in-depth audio-recorded interviews with key informants, (State administrator, members of a student assist team, social workers, administrators, parental focus groups and referring teachers). Data was collected from interviews consisting of a 60 to 90 minute focus group of 10 participants, a series of 30 to 40 minute face-to-face interviews with key informants. Dragon Naturally speaking was used to assist in transcribing the transcripts of the interviews. The data was analyzed using NVIVO. The data from this study provided valuable information to stakeholders that may have implications related to curtailing the number of African American students being inappropriately assessed for special education services.
Interpretation of the Findings
Limitations of the Study
This research study was limited to key informants and parents of students enrolled in an urban school district in the southwestern region of the United States. Because the participants were restricted to the state of Arizona, the findings were not generalized to other people or districts outside of the studied district. General conditions of research also impacted generalizability of the findings. These constructs included sample size, sampling methods, sample composition, access, and other conditions that influenced the findings in any way. Specifically, the proposed small sample identified through purposive selection for this study was not representative of either the full local and larger regional or national groups involved with the special education referral process as parents or teachers. The use of a local contact to facilitate the solicitation of participants and the scheduling of the individual interview sessions could benefit or inhibit these processes, impacting access to the targeted population. The study was not conducted in the researcher’s state of residence, which could impact ease of access to the volunteers and convenience conducting in-person interviews. Finally, the researcher’s experience with qualitative data collection, processing, analysis, and interpretation could also impact the findings.
Recommendations
Implications
The significance of this study was the potential unearthing of factors contributing to the disproportionate representation of minority students. The data from this study provided valuable information to stakeholders that may have implications related to curtailing the number of African American students being inappropriately assessed for special education services. Unnecessary referrals are a burden on the educational system and may have a negative impact on the students’ futures (Shealey & Lue, 2006). According to Levin and Rouse (2012), society would benefit from a better-educated workforce that would less likely have a need to depend on public assistance for survival and eliminate the so-called school-to-prison pipeline.
Conclusions
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