IDENTIFYING PERCEIVED AND KNOWN BARRIERS IN CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
A Statewide Research Project with Concept Systems, Inc. (CSI)
The Career and Technical Education Technical Assistance Center (CTE TAC) of New York is focused on assisting the New York State Education Department (NYSED) in delivering technical assistance to CTE providers in school districts, BOCES, and post-secondary institutions across New York State. This initiative aimed to identify effective practices for fostering successful learning experiences for students with disabilities within New York State CTE Programs. The overarching question the project sought to answer and engaged participants around was:
“One way Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs and partners could ensure a successful experience for students with disabilities is to...”
With the support of the organization’s leadership, the CTE TAC is accentuating its commitment to increasing access to high-quality CTE programs, supporting at risk students enrolled in CTE programs, improving career development for all students, and building regional collaboration amongst secondary and postsecondary education and business/industry through this initiative. The CTE TAC Director Michael Woods engaged Concept Systems, Inc. (CSI) to facilitate the design and development of a robust, sustainable Conceptual Framework. CSI worked with Mr. Woods and the other members of the CTE TAC staff to co-author a Conceptual Framework. CSI used the Group Concept Mapping (GCM) approach to gather, aggregate, and integrate the CTE TAC stakeholders' specific knowledge and opinions across New York State to inform the process and outcomes.
Read the Full Report
A dedicated Working Group guided the initiative's work at every stage, employing communication channels at all levels for recruitment and participation and supporting data interpretation and development. The Working Group also managed the planning and design process, which resulted in this report's strategic framework.
Emerging Themes
Stakeholder Groups
Based on the Group Concept Mapping analysis facilitated by CSI and a review by the working group, 7 themes emerged. Together these themes summarize the specific elements and reflect the necessary levers to engage within the CTE system to facilitate a successful experience for students with disabilities.
The objective of the process was to engage as many CTE TAC stakeholders as possible, facilitate their contributions to the plan, and ensure the broad needs of the community could be articulated.
- Association of Career and Technical Education
Administrators (ACTEA) - Statewide Network for CTE
- Statewide Network for Special Education
- Big 5 CTE Directors
- BOCES District Superintendents
- Commissioner’s Advisory Panel for Special Education Services
- CTE Content Associate Listservs
- NYSED-Approved Secondary-Level CTE Program Contacts
- CTE Professional Organizations
- Students with Disabilities
- CTE Technical Assistance Center (CTE TAC) Staff
- CTE TAC Field Team Associate Contact Lists (Regional Connections)
- New York City Department of Education
- New York State Education Department Office of Career and Technical
Education Staff - New York State Education Department Office of Special Education Staff
- Parent Special Education Advocacy Groups
- New York State Perkins V Contacts
- Rural Schools Association
Recommendations from CSI for Using this Framework:
- All seven clusters identified in this analysis should be included in a conceptual framework for fostering successful learning experiences of students with disabilities within New York State CTE Programming. Each cluster and Go-Zone should be carefully examined to highlight and prioritize items that the decision-makers and the broader CTE stakeholders should focus on in their plans for systemic improvement.
- Key areas of focus for CTE stakeholders and decision-makers should include attention on the items that respondents have deemed important but not currently present. The primary clusters in this yellow zone (of the Go-Zone) include expanding opportunities in the community and promoting stakeholder collaboration. CTE stakeholders and decision makers might want to explore federal funding through the Office of Special Education Programs or the Rehabilitation Services Administration to build these specific aspects of the CTE program by connecting this work to advancing competitive integrated employment opportunities for students once they exit the CTE program.
- Throughout this group concept mapping project, The Working Group engaged stakeholders in review, piloting, recruitment, and decision-making, among other activities. CSI highly recommends continuing to engage a broad range of stakeholders in advancing the discussion around CTE for students with disabilities. Formulating a community of practice or a deliberate networked improvement community with a task of addressing the Go-Zones through ongoing strategic plan implementation is highly recommended. It is also recommended that any ongoing work be evaluated by an external evaluator, using the principles of Improvement Science, to ensure that any recommended changes are assessed for their impact on the system.
- CSI recommends further exploration and analysis of the data collected from participants to uncover patterns of relationships that may exist in the content based on the different priority groups. For example, exploring variance in item sorting between priority groups would be worthwhile. (One aspect for further exploration is interpreting the content of clusters. Some parts of the map (clusters) are easily interpreted, and others may be more ambiguous. Additional analyses and targeted discussions with members of priority groups and other stakeholders may provide further understanding and insight into the content.)
- Moving forward, CTE TAC may consider developing a more stylized visualization or graphic of the conceptual model to expand access and understanding of the content to audiences outside those involved in the concept mapping project. A more stylized visualization of the model could be used to portray the use of findings, exploring ideas of foundational, supporting, and implementation considerations present in the model.
Go-Zones and What They Tell Us
After producing pattern matches, Group Concept Mapping reviews ratings at the statement level using go-zones. These Go-Zones show stakeholder values for every statement within the seven clusters, allowing for a more targeted understanding of the issue. By reviewing each cluster independently, Go-Zones enable decision-makers to see concepts' relationship and relative value at an organizational or strategic level. They also allow planners to discuss and use tactical or objective-level details within the conceptual constructs of the map.
Each cluster on a map has a Go-Zone and uses the same rating used in pattern matches to identify, for every statement, how important it is and how present it is. The crosstalk between these two values, as provided by different participant groups, on every statement provides an excellent opportunity for detailed prioritization of ideas in the implementation planning.
The Go-Zone is a scatterplot picture that is color-coded for ease of use. The green (or “go”) area contains ideas that were rated highly for both presence and importance. The yellow and orange quadrants are the “gap” areas, with one rating higher on average than the other rating. The gray (or “ozone”) area is an agreement zone; the ideas here are less significant for both subgroups. This suggests they may have less priority now, which helps plan by concentrating on the other areas.
Ideas in the green zone offer the most consideration for immediate action. Also practical for immediate action are the ideas in the yellow and orange zones, which describe ideas that are less important to one subgroup but more important to another and may allow us to consider ideas that may be gaps. Those “gap” zones may provide valuable insight into important concepts for developing programming to engage those youth in the three priority groups. The CTE TAC will be developing follow-up professional learning and resources to aid the field in addressing these gaps.
The Go-Zones help us understand which items were rated the most important when comparing two groups. The average current presence scores range from 1.88 to 3.19 on a 4-point scale, and the range of importance varies from 2.8 to 3.8 on a 4- point scale. Go-Zones delineate respondents’ understanding of the presence and importance of items in each cluster, providing a map for stakeholders to follow in deciding how to move forward using these findings. There is a relatively equal amount of items in each go-zone quadrant, demonstrating that participants thoughtfully analyzed the current CTE environment and made deliberate decisions on categorizing each item within a particular cluster across the factors of importance and presence. The spread of items is very similar across the comparison groups, indicating high levels of similarity in presence and importance ratings across the three categorical groups (i.e., role, setting, and region).
(Right) Go-Zone for all clusters comparing the average ratings for all participants.
All items received an average importance rating of 3.34 or higher out of a 4-point scale, indicating that the participants had a relatively even distribution of beliefs about the importance of items. Twenty-five items were in the gray zone, representing the highest level of agreement between the two priority groups, followed by 23 items within the green zone. An additional 15 (total=30) items were each plotted in the yellow and orange zones. Combined with the green zone items, 53 items represent a potential for alignment in programmatic focus across the broader CTE community.
