Identity-Blind Intervention: Examining Teachers’ Attention to Social Identity in the Context of Response to Intervention

Abstract

Limited qualitative work has examined how response to intervention (RTI) is shaping teachers’ understandings of intervention, the premise for conversation about referral, when serving diverse learners. In this case study, I use the lenses of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and intersectionality to examine (a) how educators at one public elementary school are attending to student identity in the context of RTI implementation, and (b) how RTI is mediating teachers’ approaches to academic intervention. Findings indicate that teachers struggled to develop differentiated, culturally relevant approaches to intervention. The results hold implications for the preparation of teachers to serve diverse learners using RTI.

Keywords

identity diversity social teacher education urban education cultural responsiveness

The disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education continues to be a prominent, and persistent, problem that reflects broader inequities impacting students from historically marginalized groups.¹ In particular, disproportionality impacts students in underresourced urban schools—schools that can be viewed as urban intensive schools (Milner, 2012b)—that is, those located in large, densely populated metropolitan areas serving students from diverse social backgrounds. In these schools, the inequitable distribution of resources and support is often seen in the broader school environment.

Disproportionality—which includes both the over- and under-identification of minoritized students—can sometimes serve as a consequence of teachers’ struggles to educate students in urban schools whose backgrounds differ from their own. For example, Dunn’s (1968) seminal work, which drew on data published by the U.S. Office of Education, revealed that students from racial and linguistic minoritized backgrounds comprised 60% to 80% of those classified as learning disabled, suggesting that students may have been wrongly—and disproportionately—assigned to special education. More recently, in their analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data from public elementary and secondary schools, Morgan, Farkas, Hillemeier, and Maczuga (2017) found that disability identification rates for White fourth-grade males were repeatedly two or 3 times as high as those of Black males at similar reading achievement levels, and double for those in eighth grade. They posit that under-identification is “consistent with reports that schools are more likely to . . . medicalize the struggles of White children while criminalizing those of [minoritized] children” (p. 306).

Ineffective assessment and referral procedures, which traditionally have not accounted for students’ social identities, have, arguably, been the most prominent explanations for the disproportionality problem (Heller et al., 1982). In particular, the general education teacher—who has traditionally struggled to meet the complex academic needs of diverse students—especially culturally and linguistically diverse learners with special needs (Cheatham & Hart Barnett, 2017)—is responsible for identifying “struggling” learners despite receiving limited pre-service and in-service training to foster their understanding of how to utilize data analysis to inform their instruction (Datnow & Hubbard, 2015). Once identified by the general education teacher, the school psychologist traditionally administers an IQ test, long understood to be culturally biased, and, consequently, an invalid and unreliable measure for use with diverse student populations (Garcia, 2015). Relying on this approach, it has been difficult to figure out whether the root cause of a student’s academic struggle is a disability or a reflection of a teacher’s ineffective instruction.

Misdiagnosing a student as having a disability—or overlooking those who may need special education services—may misdirect a teacher’s instruction. The dangers associated with misdiagnosing learners is what led, in part, to the development of the response to intervention (RTI) model (Dougherty Stahl, 2016). As an alternative approach to identifying students for special education evaluation, often as part of a school’s Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), RTI involves a team of educators from general and special education fields collaboratively examining multiple assessment measures that reflect students’ responsiveness (or lack thereof) to increasingly intensive academic interventions (instructional strategies targeting academic needs), through a leveled—or tiered—system, before they are identified as candidates for referral. In this way, all teachers are meant to be held more accountable for the pedagogical approaches they utilize in classrooms.

Although the opportunity to utilize RTI has existed since the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the policy itself does not enforce RTI, nor does it offer explicit guidelines for its implementation in schools. Yet, given the wide adoption of RTI (Artiles, Bal, & Thorius, 2010), it is essential to understand how educators are implementing this model, particularly in urban intensive schools serving high populations of students from historically marginalized social groups. For instance, Artiles (2011) warns that a “color-blind” approach to RTI, one that “subscribes to a universal learner perspective” through “standardized instructional protocols and assessment measures with no apparent regard for cultural or linguistic variability” (p. 437), will fall short of its goal to help ameliorate disproportionality. In other words, creating equitable learning opportunities for all students involves recognizing that complex social identities matter when developing assessment and intervention practices, particularly when that work involves high-stakes decisions, such as determining whether to refer a student for special education evaluation.

Furthermore, the manner in which identity is conceptualized is equally important in serving struggling diverse learners. Artiles (2013) argues that “many disproportionality studies rest on a ‘unitary approach’ to identity” in which “researchers set to identify the one variable”—such as race—“that has the greatest explanatory power in predicting special education placement” (p. 337). Such a unitary approach overlooks not only the complexity of identity, but also conceptualizations of diversity. The term social identity involves what Anthias (2008) describes as people’s “attributions of membership and the consequences that flow from these attributions” (p. 14) through ever-evolving socially, culturally, historically, and politically constructed processes, spaces, and contexts. Group memberships involve complex intersecting social group identity markers, including—but not limited to—race, class, gender, sexual orientation, language, religion, and ability, each of which may shape how persons see themselves as individuals, as well as members of a collective.

Although empirical research examining the nuances of RTI implementation in schools serving diverse learners is growing (Cavendish, Harry, Menda, Espinosa, & Mahotiere, 2016; Orosco & Klingner, 2010), many questions about how teachers see, and respond to, students’ unique, multifaceted social identities as part of the process of RTI assessment and intervention remain unanswered. The limited empirical work on holistic, site-based RTI implementation in schools serving large populations of students from historically marginalized groups means that we currently know little about how teachers are addressing the unique academic needs of diverse learners as they develop, modify, and implement academic interventions. This study aims to address this gap by exploring the following questions: (a) How are teachers attending to student identity in the context of RTI implementation at one urban public elementary school serving a large population of diverse learners? and (b) How is RTI mediating these teachers’ approaches to developing academic interventions over the course of 1 academic school year?

Interrupting Traditional Instructional Approaches?

Disproportionality not only raises questions about the cultural validity of assessment and referral procedures in schools but the efficacy of professional practice more broadly (Artiles & Trent, 1994). Historically, teachers have struggled to serve diverse learners, as evidenced by the opportunity gap between students from dominant and nondominant groups (Hall Mark, 2013). Disproportionality in special education, in addition to low graduation rates (Murnane, 2013) and high frequency of suspensions (Welch & Payne, 2018), reflects what Ladson-Billings (2006) describes as an “education debt” owed to students from historically marginalized social groups (p. 5). These trends illustrate the social, historical, political, and economic policies that negatively impact minoritized groups, including instructional practices that systematically fail to recognize, affirm, and utilize the diverse, multifaceted backgrounds of students in urban schools to promote learning. In presenting a framework to better understand opportunity gaps that exist in urban schools serving diverse learners, Milner (2012a) argues that color-blindness—alongside cultural conflicts, the myth of meritocracy, deficit mind-sets, and context-neutral mind-sets—systematically perpetuates notions of achievement that are based on White student norms.

To ensure that “special education is not over-used as the main education safety valve for the poor quality of instruction in some general education classrooms” (Seidl & Pugach, 2010, p. 59), RTI calls for general and special education teachers to collaboratively offer students systematic, research-based, and data-driven interventions. However, whether and how RTI is a more equitable means of special education referral is determined, in part, by teachers’ preparedness to meet their students’ instructional needs at each tier. Unequal access to high-quality, culturally competent teachers has been shown to have a considerable effect on the disparate academic outcomes of students from historically marginalized groups (Irizarry, 2015). Shortages in some districts have led to the recruitment of teachers with limited pedagogical training and instructional experience to serve some of the most disadvantaged schools (Zumwalt, Natriello, Randi, Rutter, & Sawyer, 2017). For instance, teachers in urban schools are oftentimes expected to implement narrowed, scripted curriculum in lieu of receiving appropriate professional development that would allow them to implement more effective ways of responding to their students’ unique learning needs (Milner, 2013).

Inexperienced teachers who have minimal support from underfunded school districts (Mirra & Rogers, 2016) are particularly at risk of delivering ineffective instruction to students. Such ineffective instruction may include the use of student characteristics (e.g., English learner) to explain students’ low performance on assessments (Evans et al., 2019), instructional materials that fail to affirm diverse student identities and experiences (Thornhill, 2016), and the development of negative classroom climates that do not promote the sense of safety that is conducive to learning (Lacoe, 2016). These practices place diverse urban students at greater risk for failing to master grade-level standards, potentially leading to invalid referrals for special education evaluation—particularly when teachers overlook their own role in creating and perpetuating students’ academic “struggles.”

Artiles and colleagues (2010) argue that culturally relevant approaches to RTI implementation are necessary to ensure the model does not reproduce the same inequities it was designed to counter. Culturally relevant teaching (CRT) entails the deliberate use of instructional practices that affirm students’ cultural identities as a means to academic achievement (Ladson-Billings, 1995). CRT is based on the assumption that “when academic knowledge and skills are situated within the lived experiences and frames of reference of students, they are more personally meaningful, have higher interest appeal, and are learned more easily and thoroughly” (Gay, 2000, p. 106).

Applied to RTI, CRT entails, for example, demonstrating care by getting to know individual student identities, drawing from diverse forms of assessment to better understand students’ background knowledge and instructional needs, then utilizing that information to develop academic interventions that bridge students’ home and school experiences—approaches shown to effectively increase achievement among diverse students (Savaria-Shore, 2008). Unclear, however, is how—or if—teachers are utilizing culturally relevant practices and materials, or the extent to which they consider student identity in implementing RTI across tiers. These knowledge gaps are at least in part due to the fact that few studies have examined RTI implementation in schools serving diverse learners.

Theoretical Framework

I draw from intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT; Engeström, 2000) to guide this investigation. At first glance, given their roots in different epistemologies, these theoretical frameworks may seem at odds. Intersectionality emerges from feminist scholarship, whereas CHAT is a strand of sociocultural theory. Each of these lenses affords distinct and complementary insights into how teachers are serving diverse student populations in the implementation of RTI. Whereas intersectionality provides a space to examine the hierarchical structure of social groups (e.g., be they racial, linguistic, socioeconomic, religious) in relation to one another, and the implications this has for student learning, CHAT helps illuminate the conditions that may shape teachers’ thinking about students’ social identities, and, in turn, how they might utilize those understandings in developing academic interventions.

Intersectionality and CHAT: The Distinct Affordances of Each Theory

Intersectionality offers a lens to examine how teachers are thinking about, and drawing from, students’ complex social identities in their design of academic interventions in the context of RTI. Work on intersectionality rejects the notion that individual identity markers can “exist apart from one another” (Dhamoon, 2011, p. 232), meaning, for example, that a student’s Spanish language proficiency may be inextricably tied to his or her or their cultural knowledge, or Mexicanidad (Mexican identity). Applied to instruction, a teacher serving a Latino/a emerging bilingual may need to explore culturally relevant materials in addition to language supports when designing interventions, for instance. In this way, intersectionality allows teachers to respond to a student’s multiple identities when developing intervention plans for RTI.

Furthermore, intersectionality helps illuminate the role that power plays in relation to various social identity markers. Crenshaw’s (1989, 1991) seminal work on the compounding effects of discrimination experienced by African American women in the legal system created the opportunity to understand that while effective intervention practices are imperative for all learners in schools, they are particularly important for students from multiple minoritized groups (e.g., race, class, gender) who experience intensified degrees of marginalization when given additional socially stigmatizing labels such as “learning disabled,” “low,” or “struggling learner.” In relationship to RTI, intersectionality helps interrupt the overly simplistic, traditional “medical model” of disability, which has fragmented race and disability (Artiles, 2013). An intersectionality lens is also essential for understanding the relationship between “disproportional treatment and practices across a number of interconnected educational systems” that lead to “disproportionate outcomes” (Annamma, Morrison, & Jackson, 2014, p. 54), such as the over- and underrepresentation of minoritized groups in special education.

CHAT offers a complementary opportunity to examine the role that context serves in shaping socially constructed notions of “difference,” such as the medical model. In this study, CHAT is utilized to explore teachers’ understandings of serving diverse learners in RTI, and the relationship this has to their rationale for proceeding with a referral for special education evaluation. A strand of sociocultural theory, CHAT is a theory of development and learning that analyzes a “historically evolving collective activity system” (Engeström, 2000, p. 960)—in this case, an “urban” school where RTI implementation is underway. Recognizing the complexity of the label urban, a term Gadsden and Dixon-Román (2017) describe as a “point of both identity and designation” (p. 431), the use of CHAT in this study creates an opportunity to better understand how the conditions in which teachers’ learning is situated mediate—or shape—their work.

In particular, CHAT explicates the multifaceted, collaborative nature of actions (Cole & Engeström, 1993), in part, through six, dialectically related elements: subject, object, community, rules, the division of labor, and mediating artifacts. The subjects, or learners, in an activity system, engage in individual, goal-oriented actions to work toward a common, collective object (or need; Engeström & Miettinen, 1999). In other words, teachers draw from the social experiences of their past, as well as their present, as they engage in the inevitably collaborative work of education. However, teachers do not work in isolation, but rather, as part of a larger school community, or a network of people (i.e., educators) whose relations are simultaneously shaped by various other elements, including rules—the norms and sanctions regulating behavior (Cole & Engeström, 1993). Rules may range from district mandates surrounding referral to school-based policies for RTI implementation. Also, inherent in communities is a division of labor that entails the “continuously negotiated distribution of tasks, powers, and responsibilities” (Cole & Engeström, 1993, p. 7) of teachers implementing RTI at a particular school.

Finally, Vygotsky’s (1978) ideas on cultural mediation suggest that human development emerges from social interactions and that the connection between a stimulus and response is “transcended by a ‘complex, mediated act’” (Engeström, 2001, p. 134) involving tools and signs known as mediating artifacts. In other words, learning and development are shaped, in part, by rich cultural traditions and artifacts that hold deep layers of meaning. In this study, for example, curricular materials and district referral paperwork may serve as historically rich artifacts that reflect explicit (e.g., “how-to”) and implicit (e.g., Eurocentric definitions of literacy) messages mediating teachers’ understandings of learning and intervention development.

Methods and Data Sources

I used a case study approach (Yin, 2014) to examine how teachers were attending to student identity in the context of RTI implementation, and how this alternative model—in conjunction with other school conditions—mediated their approaches to academic intervention. In relationship to intersectionality and CHAT—which focus on understanding the complexities of social phenomena—case study methodology views “the case” as a “complex entity operating within a number of contexts” and “a concatenation of domains” (Stake, 2000, pp. 439-440). Such a methodology is appropriate for examining the complexity of teachers’ meaning-making with regard to RTI.

Research Site

This study examines the seventh year of RTI implementation at Johnson Elementary School (pseudonym). Johnson is a K-5 public elementary school that is part of a large urban school district located in a major metropolitan U.S. city. At the time of the study, the teachers at Johnson were working to modify the scripted reading curriculum used at the school for more than 10 years. The push to modify lessons—while keeping the curricular materials (e.g., picture books, assessments)—grew, in part, out of school leaders’ (e.g., administrators, reading coordinator) commitment to prepare students to meet the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). In addition, students were taking—for the first time—the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC)—the new CCSS-aligned high-stakes assessment.

At the time of the study, the school served nearly 800 students who were predominantly Latino/a (90 percent). The student population also included African American (5%), Asian (1%), White (3%), and Multiracial (1%) students. In total, 62% of the students were English language learners (ELLs); in most cases, Spanish was the home language. All of the students received free breakfast and lunch at the school. The majority of the teachers at Johnson were White and monolingual.

I selected Johnson as the site for this study because it served a large population of students from historically marginalized social groups and because its RTI model had been established several years before the study. Also, like many urban public schools, Johnson was subject to meeting the demands of RTI with limited autonomy and a fixed set of resources.

Participants

The primary participants included the practitioners who were regularly involved in the implementation of RTI at Johnson, including all first- through fifth-grade general education teachers (29 teachers), the RTI coordinator (Maxine), and the school psychologist (Violet). Nine of the general education teachers agreed to serve as “focus teachers,” allowing me to observe their implementation of RTI interventions in their classrooms. They also participated in multiple rounds of interviews.

RTI Model Overview

RTI assessments were utilized to determine which students were in need of academic intervention, and whether or not they were responding to academic interventions. Johnson’s practitioners drew from various Academic Improvement Measurement System web (AIMSweb) measures—funded by the school district—to screen all first- through fifth-grade students in the fall, winter, and spring in the following areas: letter names, letter sounds, fluency, and comprehension. They also analyzed data from the school-wide reading program, district language proficiency data, and their own observations of students in class when making decisions about who would qualify to receive RTI interventions.

Teachers utilized results from the Core Phonics assessments to inform their decisions regarding intervention groupings and instructional targets. The same AIMSweb tools used to screen students were subsequently administered on a weekly (or sometimes biweekly) basis to evaluate students’ ongoing progress (or lack thereof) over 9-week periods or “progress monitoring.” The AIMSweb web-based program offered teachers formulas for calculating students’ performance goals and weekly rates of improvement (ROIs).

Teachers followed a standardized approach to RTI intervention, otherwise known as “Tier 2” at the school. The information from the Core Phonics assessment was used to arrange quasi-homogeneous intervention groups within each grade level; grade-level general education teachers implemented 20- to 30-min interventions in their classrooms at the same time 3 to 4 times per week. Due to resource limitations, the RTI model did not offer Tier 3-level intervention; that is, more intensive academic interventions (e.g., one-on-one instruction) were unavailable for students who may have needed more support. General education teachers followed a standardized intervention lesson plan format, which was offered by Penelope, the new assistant principal the year of the study, to target the following areas of reading: phonemic awareness, vocabulary, phonics, fluency, and comprehension.

Data Collection

Data collection involved monthly naturalistic observations of RTI data meetings and interventions, interviews with teachers and other practitioners involved in the implementation of the model, and the collection of relevant artifacts (e.g., data meeting agendas, assessment templates) over the course of 1 academic school year.

Observations

The study included observations of 24 RTI data team meetings and eight referral meetings. In these meetings, data team members discussed students’ performance on progress monitoring assessments in relation to academic interventions. Data teams at Johnson were comprised of individual grade-level teachers, the RTI coordinator, and the school psychologist. Guided by a semistructured observation protocol, I took field notes while observing the meetings, and later wrote as expanded field notes (Merriam, 2009). In addition, I observed each of nine general education teachers—from Grades 1 to 5—implements RTI interventions in their classrooms 3 to 5 times over the course of the school year (a total of 31 intervention sessions). Guided by a semistructured observation protocol, I took field notes during the interventions, and later wrote expanded field notes.

Interviews

Using semistructured interview protocols, I conducted interviews with teachers and other practitioners involved in the implementation of RTI at the school. Between one and three interviews were conducted—ranging from 30 to 60 min each—with the following participants: principal, assistant principal, RTI coordinator, psychologist, counselor, special education facilitator, and two special education teachers. In addition, a group of nine general education teachers participated in two to three interviews (ranging from 30 to 60 min) each to help generate understandings about their background knowledge of assessment and data analysis, and ongoing evaluations of diverse students’ learning, as they related to intervention and referral (a total of 25 interviews). I audiotaped and transcribed each of these interviews. These nine teachers also participated in at least three post-intervention observation interviews, ranging from 15 to 30 min, that included questions designed to unpack their perceptions of students’ academic performance and needs following the classroom observations (a total of 31 interviews). I took detailed notes on what participants said during the post-observation interviews and then translated them into expanded field notes.

Documents

I also collected relevant visual and written materials to better understand how instructors approached, and made sense of, the referral process and implemented academic intervention. This included samples of RTI intervention materials, as well as additional documents shaping teachers’ understandings of student responsiveness that related to assessment practices within the RTI model (e.g., blank RTI assessments). Academic intervention materials (e.g., lesson plan templates, reading passages, vocabulary lists) also served as visual aids throughout individual interviews (Bauer, 1996).

Data Analysis

Intersectionality and CHAT informed both deductive and inductive approaches to analyzing the data. The first round of coding, for example, consisted of identifying (a) what social identity markers (e.g., race, gender, language proficiency), if any, were addressed in practitioners’ conversations about students and assessment or interactions with learners; and (b) how the six, interconnected elements of the CHAT activity system informed teachers’ meaning-making (Yamagata-Lynch, 2010). As I read through field notes, I looked for instances where teachers addressed students’ social identities (through data team meeting discourse, intervention materials that reflected students’ cultures, etc.), and then examined what conditions surrounded those conversations and approaches (e.g., district policies, school norms, professional development).

My coding process involved reading each line of data and color-coding each “prefigured” (Creswell, 2007, p. 152) code in Word. Throughout, I documented my process in a separate coding manual that became more detailed with each new set of data. For instance, I drew from the CHAT heuristic to describe codes pertaining to subjects, or teachers (e.g., background experiences, teaching philosophies); mediating artifacts (e.g., RTI data meeting handouts, blank referral documents); and rules (e.g., district referral mandates, school-wide data-collection procedures).

An inductive approach in the second round of coding offered an opportunity to explore (a) how teachers discussed social identity and (b) the dynamic relationships among an activity system’s six elements, including the role RTI served among these interconnected conditions within the initial macro-codes. Using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), I “winnow[ed] the data” into “families” (Creswell, 2007, p. 153) or themes and subthemes, by collapsing, revising, and reorganizing the codes into patterns (Miles & Huberman, 1994). I also created matrix displays in this process (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Through this analytic process, for example, the notion of “identity-blindness” emerged from various examples of teachers’ reluctance to see students as different. I also wrote analytic and self-reflective memos at every stage of data analysis to help make “implicit thoughts explicit” (Creswell, 2007, p. 290). These memos included reflections on my positionality as a bilingual Latina conducting research in a primarily Latino/a school. In addition, the process of member checking offered additional opportunities to further interrogate my biases as participants and I had conversations about the accuracy of the data.

Findings: Standardizing Intervention and Compartmentalizing Difference

Using intersectionality as a lens, it became clear that the RTI model at Johnson involved the use of standardized intervention procedures that failed to acknowledge or respond to students’ unique, complex social identities, thereby continuing a “lengthy history of essentialism and exclusion” that enables particular narratives to be “ignored” (Nash, 2008, p. 3). Moreover, in their discussions of students’ academic progress at data meetings, the school’s predominantly White teachers typically talked about students in generic terms when sharing their understandings of progress monitoring results, in the process of avoiding conversations about identity.

One-Size-Fits-All Intervention Artifacts and Approaches

Although “each combination of [a student’s] identity is novel” (Williams & Fredrick, 2015, p. 385), observation data revealed that many teachers at Johnson served its diverse students through one-size-fits-all RTI interventions involving the use of standardized instructional approaches and decontextualized materials that did not reflect diverse cultures, languages, or other aspects of social identity. Materials were decontextualized in that meaning was conveyed solely through text (as opposed to pictures, etc.), leaving the students to depend on knowledge of the language to derive meaning from the handouts, word lists, reading passages, and so on (Gee, 2014).

The intervention period typically began with students reading from the same list of vocabulary words together. For example, Sara asked her third-grade students to “say (or read), spell, and say” 14 consecutive words, including because, between, and city. The words were listed in columns and rows, on a plain, white sheet of paper. “This is my first year I feel like I’m being successful because I have an outline of what I’m supposed to be teaching,” reflected Sara, who noted her experience as a third-grade teacher in several states gave her the opportunity to learn how to teach comprehension, yet she felt she struggled to provide students with phonics instruction. Teachers also prompted students to engage in sorting and matching games, and to read decontextualized decodable books (i.e., stories that emphasized decoding skills), for instance, a book about a boy who bakes a cake by a lake. Finally, the teachers invited the students to respond to scripted comprehension questions such as “How many officially recognized constellations are there?” and “How are insects and amphibians related, or the same?”

Oftentimes, these printable reading passages lacked substantial story lines and characters, and did not reflect students’ cultural backgrounds. For instance, Sara’s group read about Stan and Meg: “Stan and Meg are bugs. Meg has a big sun hat. Meg is hot.” The teachers drew from Eurocentric instructional materials that overlooked the nuances of students’ individual experiences, and often missed opportunities to pose questions that may invite students to make connections between the content and their background knowledge and experiences (Gay, 2010). For instance, Ethan and Henry, fifth-grade teachers, concluded their intervention sessions by helping students answer various scripted comprehension questions that were included in the reading passages they accessed through alternative sources such as Teachers Pay Teachers or resource books. Scripted questions such as “How many officially recognized constellations are there?” typically had fixed correct responses, such that students did not engage in evaluative, open-ended analysis of the text.

While Henry, who was new to Johnson, felt confident in his ability to develop connections with students, he was less prepared to engage in data-driven academic intervention—in part because this was his first year serving in a school that implemented RTI. Henry attributed his early experiences as a camp counselor to shaping his views on supporting students with diverse academic needs. “. . . you basically treat all kids the same,” argued Henry. The only person of color on his grade-level team, Henry, who is African American, noted the importance of rapport-building. “If [students] like you, then they trust you. And if they trust you, you get a lot more out of them . . . that’s all kids,” explained Henry. However, when it came to planning intervention sessions, Henry described his process as “random” at times. “I’m just sort of opening books and saying ‘that looks good’ . . . I need to spend more time with RTI coordinators,” he said.

Henry was among a group of teachers who sought alternative reading passages from outside resources. These reading passages addressed a number of topics, including visiting a landfill, vitamin K, and the solar system. However, much like the standardized intervention materials, these alternative resources did not represent culturally diverse characters or backgrounds. In this way, the standardized intervention materials served as “mediators of action-level decisions” (Engeström, 2008, p. 207), and helped shape teachers’ notions of what instructional resources should look like. For instance, Ray, a sixth-year teacher with previous experience in advertising, explained his reasoning for selecting alternative intervention materials. “The learning A to Z is very helpful because it has a lot of stories with specific word counts,” said Ray. Like the standardized intervention materials, the resources Ray accessed through Reading A through Z reflected predictable, decontextualized text.

Maxine and Penelope instituted standardized intervention approaches at Johnson during the year of the study largely to support teachers in the effective implementation of intervention, within the boundaries of resource availability. Outside of attending RTI meetings, teachers did not receive explicit professional development in RTI intervention. Penelope—who had extensive experience in literacy, teaching, and teacher education—explained, during an interview, that her development of the intervention format was informed by her understanding of the research presented in the Report of National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read (National Reading Panel [NRP], 2000). Specifically, Penelope argued that because “10 to 20 percent [of students] are never going to learn to read without direct explicit instruction with those five components [phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension],” it was important for teachers to target these areas with all students in RTI intervention. In this way, the dialectical relationship between a learner’s (Penelope’s) meaning-making and authority (in this case, as an administrator)—perpetuated by rules surrounding RTI implementation and the division of labor at Johnson—largely shaped teachers’ approaches to intervention at this school.

Penelope reasoned in an interview that the RTI intervention model offered teachers guidance “to teach reading” as well as a “structure in order for students to be successful.” Indeed, teachers consistently described the intervention guidelines and materials as assets. Myra, a third-grade teacher, explained in her interview, “It’s the first year I’ve actually been told, ‘This is what you want to teach’ . . . Most of the time we know [students’] weaknesses and then we have to come up with something, and I’m not as educated on that part.” These materials were also utilized because they were “free,” explained the assistant principal. Maxine lamented that resource limitations (e.g., time, funding) meant that teachers did not have access to formal professional development on assessment or intervention. Rather, teachers learned about RTI procedures and expectations within RTI meetings. Furthermore, teachers did not have access to coaching (e.g., observations of their interventions and constructive feedback) or time to offer students specialized Tier 3 supports.

Minimal and Compartmentalized Attention to Social Identity in Data Meetings

As teachers engaged in discussions about students’ progress during RTI data meetings and offered their interpretations of progress monitoring data, they typically talked about students in generic terms that “erased . . . the voices, experiences, situated knowledge, and perspectives of those traditionally marginalized” (Dhamoon, 2011, p. 223). When teachers engaged in discussions about identity, they did so in a compartmentalized fashion, thereby “isolating” aspects of students’ identities (Jordan-Zachery, 2007, p. 261).

Quantitative, data-driven discourse

Discussions in RTI meetings were anchored in RTI data. Specifically, the division of labor for RTI implementation called for Maxine to facilitate discussions about learners’ ROI scores. Teachers also shared how students were performing on individual intervention tasks (e.g., fluency rates), and assessments from the school-wide curriculum (e.g., scores on unit tests, teachers’ observations of students’ oral responses to comprehension questions). In this way, discussions were largely shaped by the mediating artifacts utilized in RTI, namely, RTI assessments and intervention materials.

At the same time, discussions were also shaped by the way educators viewed the mediating artifacts utilized in RTI. For instance, Penelope, the assistant principal, asserted that data-driven approaches, such as the use of universal screeners, have the capacity to “take away bias.” She shared an anecdote in which she assumed a kindergarten student, who she said reminded her of the comic book character Pig Pen based on what she described as an unclean appearance, would perform poorly on an assessment. “. . . being human, I was just like this kid’s gonna be low because no one at home takes any effort . . . obviously,” she explained. Ultimately, the assessment indicated the student was reading at a second-grade level.

Some social identity markers—such as religion, sexual orientation, and gender (outside the use of pronouns)—never emerged in the discourse at data meetings. On rare occasions, race, ethnicity, and culture emerged as outgrowths of conversations regarding English language proficiency. For example, in a discussion of the English language proficiency of one particular student, the second-grade instructional team realized that no one could identify the child’s home language. “I know it’s not Spanish,” said one of the teachers in the meeting. Some teachers speculated that the child may have been from Guam or the Philippines, but no one confirmed this within the scope of the meeting. In this way, the teachers were sometimes completely unaware of students’ cultures.

In some cases, teachers—such as Nate, who explained in an interview that he had minimal experience serving students in Title 1 schools prior to serving Johnson—actively avoided recognizing difference as a way to establish the same high expectations for all learners. “I don’t care who they are and I tell them that right out. You can all do good work—I don’t care if you’re on IEPs, or you’re ELL, or whatever your story is. Everybody can do good work,” said Nate. Alternatively, several teachers communicated essentialized notions of difference. For instance, Maxine claimed that “every one of our kids have economic factors,” inherently assuming all students shared the same financial experience. Similarly, field notes and interview transcripts revealed multiple instances in which students were referred to as “my special ed kids,” “IEP students,” “the IEPs,” “IEP people,” “higher kids,” “low [Reading] group,” “achiever kids,” “red kids,” “bubble kids,” and “RTI kids.” Such labels defined students unidimensionally by their academic standings. Roth and Lee (2007) posit that “during the pursuit of the object, subjects [or teachers] not only produce outcomes but also produce/reproduce themselves” (p. 215). In other words, teachers drew from their unique background experiences and views as they engaged in the implementation of RTI. In turn, their experiences with RTI served to affirm or interrupt their assumptions about student learning. For teachers such as Nate, who viewed difference as irrelevant to academic performance, an RTI model that was anchored in quantitative data and decontextualized text aligned with, and supported, his assumption that student identity could be separated from considerations for instruction.

Compartmentalized attention to prioritized social identity markers

Grant and Zwier (2011) explain that because “identity axes interact to produce oppression and privilege in schools . . . intersectional analysis and practice should be part of our toolbox for increasing student achievement” (p. 182). However, in cases where teachers did, in fact, recognize certain aspects of students’ social identities, these discussions were limited to a particular set of social identity markers (i.e., English language proficiency, socioeconomic status (SES), socio-emotional and behavioral needs) which the teachers treated as compartmentalized, static entities that they addressed one at a time.

Observations of RTI data meetings reflected how teachers discussed particular aspects of student identity in cases where students were not responding to academic interventions, as indicated by low ROI scores. Discussions surrounding these particular aspects of social identity emerged largely from district referral mandates. Before a student could be referred for special education evaluation, multidisciplinary team (MDT) members were required to sign a district form stating that they agreed that various “exclusionary factors”—including “limited English proficiency” and “economic or environmental disadvantaged or cultural factors”—were not the primary causes of students’ academic difficulties. In compliance with district rules regarding referral, Maxine read each exclusionary factor to the MDT members at each referral meeting, and checked-off each one as it was discussed.

Deficit perspectives in data meetings

Some teachers tended to articulate deficit-oriented views of “difference” as they searched for explanations behind students’ ongoing academic struggles, as measured by low ROI scores. Deficit views often prompted teachers to identify students, families, and culture as the cause of academic struggle—versus looking to these sources as areas of strength—thereby ignoring the role of structural inequity (Battey & Franke, 2015). Most notably, limited English proficiency was mainly described as an obstacle to growth. Some teachers, for example, discussed strategies for incentivizing students to practice English more often. Comments from RTI data meetings also included the following: “We gotta get English in her head” and “I caught [emphasis added] her mom speaking Spanish to her on the field trip.” In one instance, Sara reminded two students to speak “in English.” Within the context of RTI data meetings, I did not observe teachers affirming or valuing students’ home languages or discuss the affordances of helping students become bi-literate—despite the literature showing the importance of affirming a student’s native language to enhance academic achievement (Gee, 2005).

Notably, interview data indicated that a handful of teachers, who had themselves experienced compounded levels of oppression in their lives, were actively thinking about the implications that students’ social identities had for their learning. For example, Estella, a special education teacher who self-identified as Latina, explained, “I’m an ELL myself. I know I need hands-on learning experiences.” Similarly, Rene, who shared in an interview that she has dysgraphia, sought ways to use her own special needs as teachable moments in the classroom. “I used to make a game of it . . . the kids would have to find and fix my letters [on the board].” Roth and Lee (2007) explain that “whichever identities are salient for an individual during a particular context exist in a complex dance with one’s sense of agency and position within the social world” (p. 215). As members of multiple historically marginalized social groups (e.g., culturally, linguistically, women, special needs), these teachers spoke freely about their social identities in the context of interviews. Analysis of the discourse at RTI data meetings, however, showed that the majority of teachers were not prepared to engage in complex conversations about identity.

In one instance, Myra, the only Latina in her grade-level team, shared with her colleagues a cultural and political concern held by one of her students:

Myra is recounting a lesson that involves reading a story about the events in the Holocaust . . . Myra shares with the third grade teachers that one of her students fears that if Donald Trump becomes president, he and his family will need to return to Mexico. The teachers’ facial expressions portray empathy and compassion; however, nobody shares a verbal response. (Field notes, November 11, 2016)

Myra recounted the deep connection her student made to the cultural, religious, and political issues discussed in the book that she selected for one of her lessons. The anecdote reflected the only time culture was explicitly addressed in an RTI meeting. However, Myra’s comment was met with silence from her colleagues.

Discussion: Compartmentalizing Social Identity

Intersectionality and CHAT helped to illuminate the complexity of teachers’ thinking surrounding the identification, support, and potential referral of diverse “struggling” learners at macro- and micro-levels of education. While intersectionality pushes us to recognize that social identity markers are not static or irreducible (Dhamoon, 2011), the findings of this study indicate that teachers attended to student identity in a compartmentalized fashion, if at all, throughout RTI implementation. In this way, teachers’ implementation of RTI mirrored the traditional medical model approach, which treats disability—or academic need, broadly—as separate from other aspects of social identity (Artiles, 2013). This identity-blind, one-size-fits-all approach to RTI implementation is problematic in that teachers failed to explore how to support students in making connections between their sociocultural knowledge/experiences and content as they worked toward attaining academic proficiency.

CHAT helps frame a way to better understand the major factors that shaped teachers’ approaches to serving—and potentially, referring—diverse student learners participating in RTI. This included an emphasis on the use of standardized intervention procedures—which were reinforced through RTI rules (e.g., school-wide RTI procedures and district referral policies) and mediating artifacts (e.g., decontextualized RTI intervention materials)—to carry out RTI implementation, at the expense of addressing teachers’ limited preparation—as well as reluctance—to engage in complex discussions about social identity. Taken together, intersectionality and CHAT help illustrate that the RTI model at Johnson did not serve to support teachers in designing more equitable academic supports for students from historically marginalized social groups in urban schools.

Identity-Blind Approaches to RTI Implementation

Johnson teachers took an identity-blind approach to RTI implementation, reflected in their limited attention to students’ social identities during interventions and data meeting discussions. Despite serving predominantly Latino/a, Spanish-speaking students, these teachers did not typically develop interventions that included keywords in students’ home language as well as in English—an instructional approach shown to improve linguistically diverse students’ learning experiences (Linan-Thompson, Vaughn, Prater, & Cirino, 2006). The predominantly monolingual teachers devalued students’ home languages in discouraging the use of Spanish in school. In this way, the “power relations in the wider society,” in which those who do not speak English are often marginalized, “express[ed] themselves” (Cummins, 2012, p. 1975) at Johnson. Furthermore, through this approach, teachers missed the opportunity to utilize students’ knowledge of one language as a bridge to develop skills in another (i.e., English; Lindholm-Leary & Borsato, 2006). In other words, teachers devalued the expertise of Johnson’s diverse students, a practice too often seen in schools serving multilingual and multicultural students (Souto-Manning, 2012).

In addition, despite the large population of Latino/a students, intervention materials did not reflect culturally diverse characters or figures. Cummins (2012) argues that “students from communities whose identities have been devalued in the wider society”—such as those from Latino/a backgrounds—“will benefit from instruction that affirms their identities within the context of school” (p. 1975). Most of the decontextualized instructional materials used at Johnson did not include rich, diverse characters that may have served to make learning more relevant and meaningful to its diverse students. Moreover, conversations about race and culture—and how students’ cultural identities potentially relate to their academic needs—did not commonly emerge in data meeting discourse. Here, intersectionality helps reveal what Crenshaw (1991) describes as the tendency to ignore within-group differences in identity politics. Rather than discussing the implications intersections of race and language have for instruction (e.g., developing culturally relevant instruction with appropriate language supports), teachers’ discussions in RTI meetings were generally anchored in AIMSweb assessment data that measured only students’ fluency rates, error patterns, and other skill-based information.

Minimal attention to race and culture, specifically, reflected a predominantly color-blind approach to RTI implementation; that is, the blurring of “race should not matter” and “race does not matter” philosophies (Atwater, 2008, p. 246). Whereas “race should not matter” speaks to legal, historical, and social efforts to ensure individuals are not denied rights and freedoms based on the color of their skin, the “race does not matter” philosophy involves relying on notions of merit (Ullucci & Battey, 2011) and privilege in the process of turning a “‘blind eye’ to racial differences, despite the fact that skin color does indeed impact how individuals are treated” (Atwater, 2008, p. 247). In this study, teachers at Johnson did not examine the extent to which instructional materials and approaches reflected the unique, intersecting cultural experiences of their students.

When prompted to engage in discussions in data and referral meetings about students’ social identities by district referral policies that called for an examination of potential exclusionary factors, teachers often addressed social identity markers in isolation. In this way, they complied with district rules that called for MDT members to consider the impact students’ social identities had on their academic needs, but failed to examine the complex relationships between students’ sociocultural knowledge and instruction—a process demanded by intersectionality.

Rules and Mediating Artifacts Monopolize Johnson’s RTI Model

While intersectionality helps illuminate how teachers’ understandings of student identity in relation to their development of interventions emerged in the unique conditions surrounding RTI implementation at Johnson, CHAT offers the opportunity to unpack these conditions by illustrating how teachers’ examinations of students’ social identities were largely influenced by an emphasis on standardized approaches to RTI implementation, which was maintained through rules surrounding RTI procedures and decontextualized mediating artifacts. These particular elements monopolized the RTI model; less attention was focused on preparing teachers (or, in some cases, compelling reluctant teachers) to participate in complex conversations about social identity. The activity system as defined in CHAT, in this case the Johnson RTI model, served to “realize and reproduce” itself by “generating actions and operations” (Engeström, 2000, p. 964) that went largely unquestioned by teachers.

Standardized curriculum narrows intervention approaches

With few professional development opportunities and supports to guide teachers’ professional understandings of RTI intervention, the standardized intervention procedures Penelope and Maxine provided teachers—in an attempt to support their instructional practices—narrowed teachers’ views of learning to skills-based instruction. Mirroring the school’s tradition of scripted curriculum, some teachers, such as Myra, were relieved to have a format to follow if/when they felt unprepared to develop effective intervention lessons. This practice is all too common in schools serving diverse students, in which “scripted and narrowed curriculum is seen as the means to help [underprepared teachers] know what to teach, when to teach it, and how” (Milner, 2013, p. 163). One consequence of this approach is the deprofessionalization of teachers, whose work becomes “technical” (Milner, 2013, p. 163) as opposed to well-informed or responsive to students’ diverse academic needs. Indeed, while several teachers utilized alternative resources for RTI intervention, these also commonly mirrored similarly decontextualized resources, such as decodable passages and scripted comprehension questions, illustrating teachers’ struggle to shift from the skills-based paradigm echoed in the RTI intervention format. In this way, CHAT helps highlight how the scripted RTI curriculum served as a mediating artifact that reinforced dominant, historic approaches to teaching.

Another common consequence of scripted curriculum is that, oftentimes, this one-size-fits-all approach fails to serve the unique academic needs of diverse students. This is not to say that the intervention procedures at Johnson did not include research-based approaches. Explicit, systematic phonics instruction (Torgesen et al., 1999) and repeated reading (Samuels, 1979), for example, were two of several strategies in the standardized intervention format that, in some cases, have been shown to improve students’ reading performance. However, the standardized approach to serving all students in RTI was limited in several ways. First, Penelope’s development of the RTI intervention format was guided by the NRP report, which does not “address issues relevant to second language learning” (NRP, 2000, p. 3); its findings may not necessarily support the unique instructional needs of the school’s culturally and linguistically diverse students. In addition, students mostly participated in rote skill-based lessons as opposed to higher level thinking activities that drew from their experiential knowledge. Orosco (2010) questions the assumption that “teaching just the reading basics functioning independently of English language learners’ sociocultural experiences . . . can develop effective readers” (p. 266), as students miss any bridge to help them develop connections between background knowledge and content. For instance, banning Spanish meant that teachers missed the opportunity to develop students’ English proficiency by building their home language (Gee, 2005). Consequently, teachers risked marginalizing diverse students and devaluing their sociocultural resources through standardized approaches to exploring exclusionary factors that were not paired with adequate professional development.

Even with district referral policies in place calling for teachers to consider the implications of potential exclusionary factors as alternate explanations for difficulties students might be experiencing, historically embedded messages about the value of a narrow approach to instruction were difficult to interrupt—illustrating, according to CHAT, the difficulty of reaching levels of expansive, transformative learning—in this case, among teachers largely reliant on scripted curriculum. As noted, teachers discussed a privileged set of social identity markers (i.e., those noted as exclusionary factors by the district) when prompted to do so by the RTI coordinator or district referral guidelines. In this way, policy—or rules—accounted for the possibility that teachers might potentially refer students for special education evaluation erroneously, particularly in cases where aspects of social identity, such as low SES, prevent students from learning effectively in schools. However, much like their approach to implementing interventions, the teachers took a primarily technical approach to examining potential exclusionary factors (e.g., limited English proficiency) that would inhibit the school psychologist from moving forward with a special education evaluation. In doing so, they missed the opportunity to examine how students’ experiences as cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic “minorities”—for instance—potentially shaped their academic needs. In other words, standardized RTI procedures—which aligned with a history of scripted reading and math curriculum implementation at the school—prepared teachers to comply with district referral rules and not necessarily to critically engage with these policies.

Teachers’ limited preparation and/or willingness to recognize social identity

Johnson’s RTI model did not address individual teachers’ understandings about serving students from historically marginalized social groups. Teachers’ perspectives—whether deficit- or equity-oriented—were not part of the discourse of intervention. Teachers’ willingness to engage in conversations about identity were shaped, in large part, by their own unique backgrounds, experiences, and philosophies. As the examples noted above show, the majority of teachers were not prepared—or were unwilling to—engage in complex conversations about race, gender, SES, and other aspects of social identity. Nate, a teacher with limited experience serving underresourced schools, for instance, shared a reluctance to recognize students’ “stor[ies]” or differences. Through an “every child is different” identity-blind philosophy that recognized all students as unique (and thereby, the same), Nate also risked communicating to diverse students that the sociocultural and experiential knowledge they brought to school with them did not have value in the dominant school culture. Similarly, monolingual teachers who promoted English-only spaces in classrooms, and utilized essentializing labels such as “red kids” and “RTI kids,” risked marginalizing diverse learners receiving RTI interventions. Without structures in place to allow teachers to examine their views of difference as they pertained to instruction, the RTI model at Johnson enabled any teachers working from deficit-oriented perspectives to continue to do so—unchallenged by equity-oriented colleagues.

Indeed, a small minority of teachers felt prepared and comfortable to see difference and to talk about social identity—as it relates to instruction. Among this group was Olivia, who expressed a commitment to advocate for her students during an interview. However, in the context of RTI implementation, Olivia was “a collective subject” who did not feel positioned to “gover[n] activity” (Lektorsky, 2009, p. 82), that is, to share her unique perspective and position with her grade-level colleagues in data meetings. When Myra attempted to discuss culture in one instance when she shared her student’s feelings of nervousness about a presidential candidate, her comment was met with silence from her colleagues, illustrating their resistance to engaging in discussions about identity. Without formal preparation to urge, and guide, teachers to engage in this work, teachers resorted to identity-blind approaches to RTI that did not extend beyond standardized, Eurocentric, skills-based interventions—the final supports students received before MDT members decided whether or not to refer students for special education evaluation.

Implications and Recommendations

Teachers’ historic struggles to effectively serve the academic needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students in underresourced urban intensive schools suggest that teachers need to engage in explicit and purposeful conversations about how they can provide diverse students the precise academic supports they need at each tier of RTI. Beyond offering teachers standardized intervention approaches and materials, as well as mandates to explore potential exclusionary factors in the context of referral meetings, school and district leaders—as well as teacher education programs—must support teachers through professional development/learning experiences that prepare them to (a) develop culturally relevant, data-driven academic interventions, and (b) engage in reflective collaborative discussions about their potential biases and assumptions of students from historically marginalized social groups. Furthermore, empirical research is needed to explore how teacher educators can prepare pre-service and in-service teachers to participate in this work.

For example, teachers can explore the role that bias may play in any assessment and also make the process of learning about students’ social identities (e.g., their cultures, home languages, families, communities) part of the data-collection process in RTI. Furthermore, they can draw from students’ interests and backgrounds when selecting intervention materials (e.g., picture books, apps, games) and involve families in their conversations about data and student support.

Conclusion

The process of eliminating bias in education is ongoing and involves a great deal of work. Without a space to revisit potential assumptions about instruction, assessment, and student performance—and the implications that intersecting social identity markers hold for students’ individual academic needs and approaches to special education identification (Blanchett, Klingner, & Harry, 2009)—teachers are unlikely to expand their knowledge of serving diverse student populations. In that sense, the potential RTI holds to “enhance learning opportunities” (Artiles et al., 2010, p. 250) demands deep, ongoing empirical examinations of how RTI is actually being appropriated by teachers in schools throughout the implementation process.

The findings from this study indicate that the primarily identity-blind RTI model, coupled with limited resources, prevented teachers from developing differentiated, culturally relevant interventions. Specifically, teachers struggled to promote social justice, which calls for educators to “recogniz[e] and respec[t] all social/racial/cultural groups by actively working against the assumptions and arrangement of schooling (and society)” (Cochran-Smith, 2010, p. 454, emphasis in original)—notably, in this case, the one-size-fits-all approaches to assessment and intervention. These struggles speak to the need for greater supports to guide and incentivize teachers to engage in the work of developing targeted, academic intervention plans that affirm, and utilize, students’ sociocultural knowledge and experiences to serve their academic needs. Otherwise, RTI falls short of its promise to offer a more equitable approach to the referral of students for special education evaluation.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

ORCID iD

Joyce Gomez-Najarro

Author Biography

Joyce Gomez-Najarro is an assistant professor in the Department of Literacy and Reading Education at California State University, Fullerton. Her research focuses on teachers’ understandings and approaches to literacy assessment and instruction when serving diverse student populations, teachers’ treatment of student identity within educational policies and teaching practices, and social justice in teacher education.

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