UC Irvine

Background. Students with disabilities, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds, remain one of the last groups not fully included in K-12 education in the United States. Concurrently, digital technologies provide a powerful means for amplifying the agency and inclusion of diverse children with disabilities, thus enhancing their educational engagement. Yet little research exists examining inclusive uses of technology among diverse students with disabilities in schools.

Accordingly, as schools begin shifting toward inclusive models of education, understanding technology’s role in this process will be critical to the success of inclusion efforts aimed at creating educational access and equity. Within this context, examining digital technology use to support learners' inclusion and engagement with language and literacy practices is becoming more salient. However, this research has not been conducted in inclusive classroom environments fully integrating students with and without disabilities.

This dissertation adds to this developing field by examining the ways digital technologies support inclusion and language and literacy practices at Future Visions Academy, a full-inclusion public charter school in the Western United States. This dissertation centers on marginalized voices of families of color – a departure from prior research on disability, literacy, and technology centering on majority white, higher-resourced, families. Analyses focus on how these families’ experiences – in relation to language, literacy, and technology practices at school and home – shaped students’ inclusion.

Method. An embedded case-study design incorporating qualitative approaches was used to analyze interview, focus group, and classroom observation data. Data sources included 49 weekly classroom observations, 26 family interviews, 14 staff interviews, and fieldnotes collected during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years. Data was analyzed using first and second cycle coding to identify themes and categories pertaining to inclusive practices, literacy activities, and digital technology use. Results were then used to conduct a directed content analysis of the data. Participant validation and triangulation were used to minimize researcher bias and support data reliability, truthfulness, and validity.

Findings. Three themes were illuminated: (1) FVA’s social organization allowed a fully inclusive environment for diverse children with disabilities to thrive, (2) digital technologies were used at FVA to help students express their agency and voice, while developing language and literacy skills, and (3) digital technologies were used at FVA to foster stronger networks and connections among all school stakeholders.

Findings reveal that, through their digital technology use, students were able to give voice to their thoughts and perspectives and share a fuller picture of themselves as creators. Moreover, students’ experiences with digital technologies have a profound mediating impact on teachers’ understanding of students’ voices and competencies. Examples – such as students’ use of Chromebook laptop speech-to-text functions for writing and iPad AAC devices for linguistic expression during classroom discussions – demonstrated digital technology affordances to amplify, empower, and include student voice.

Significance. Reform minded proponents of inclusion have moved towards school-wide models of inclusion in which all students are seen as permanent members of the general education classroom. This has resulted in the inception of schools like Future Visions Academy. A commitment to this view of inclusion positions students with disabilities as normative, valued, and included members of the school community. This vision of inclusion requires a substantive paradigm shift by policy makers and school leadership, and teachers and parents, in how principles of inclusion have historically played out in public schools. Using Future Visions Academy as a case study, this dissertation sheds light on inclusive best practices that enable this vision of inclusion to be materialized at the intersection of language, literacy, and technology.