Normalizing difference in the creation of civic learning opportunities

As experts in specific content, skills and pedagogical content knowledge, Social Studies educators have relatively less training on and experiences with best practices for creating accessible and inclusive learning opportunities for students with highly varied learning preferences and needs. The Integrated Co-taught social studies classroom is an example of an educational setting in which there is tremendous variation in how specific students best learn social studies concepts. While learning opportunities and academic achievement in all areas impact the quality of students' lives, civic learning opportunities specifically impact the degree to which students eventually participate and thrive as democratic citizens.;This dissertation study explores the practices of three social studies educators who strive to create inclusive civic learning opportunities through student driven responsive contexts. Conceptualizing the social studies teacher as the gatekeeper of civic learning opportunities, I use a theoretical framework predicated upon Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and "local knowledge" and operationalized through an interpretivist case study to explore the major research question: How do three secondary social studies teachers create ongoing inclusive civic learning opportunities for democratic participation in Integrated Co-taught Classrooms?;Over the course of several months, I explored the curricular and instructional decisions made by three secondary social studies teachers working in integrated co-taught social studies classrooms to discover the ways in which they designed inclusive civic learning opportunities for students labeled with an educational disability in addition to how these teachers considered the diverse learning needs of all students. Several rounds of teacher interviews were conducted, two units for each classroom were observed (a fall unit and a spring unit for each teacher) and documents from each classroom were collected and analyzed. Findings indicated that teachers utilized four common approaches to creating inclusive communities of civic learning for democratic participation: individual student preferences for student participation and expression (civic multi-literacies), topics of universal familiarity and interest that created a simulated civic square, highly structured interdependent collaborative learning, and differentiated access for traditional civic codes of power. Teachers reported mitigating obstacles such as limited time to discover knowledge about students, the largely deficit based and vague knowledge on student IEP reports, the challenges regarding time for content coverage and test preparation along with other normative pressures, and the need for more tools to discover student needs and strengths. Other findings related to persistent themes that arose in the creation of inclusive civic learning opportunities such as, the presence of disabling factors in students not classified with an educational disability but which interfered with democratic participation, the value of structures and problematic nature of the absence of structures, and the fact that teachers developed an ever-evolving theory of each students learning needs. This study has implications for research, teacher practice and professional development.