The default culture within most schools today is more transactional than transformational and dehumanizing in that students and teachers do not have the space where they can be successful without sacrificing some part of their identities.
“Queremos un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos // We want a world where many worlds fit.” – Zapatista of Chiapas
Perhaps this is because we have embraced a culture of belonging that comes from compliance and conformity rather than divergence and diversity. Both lead to a sense of belonging but the difference is the cost. This is the paradox of belonging. Perhaps this is the challenge to address in schools. Perhaps this is a challenge best addressed at the intersection of imagination and design for the future of schools.
“Any system produces what it was designed to produce.” – The National Equity Project
Liberatory design is an emergent process that adds two notable modes to design thinking: notice and reflect. As components of consciousness, intentional work in which educators notice and reflect will result in schools that are more fully human because the faculty is more self-aware in its instructional practices and curriculum design. This suggests the real value of liberatory design, its ability to counter the tendencies in modern life that underlie systemic injustice.
Short report: Preferences for identity-first versus person-first language in a US sample of autism stakeholders - Amanda Taboas, Karla Doepke, Corinne Zimmerman, 2022
Although person-first language is commonly used in many professional settings, this practice has received criticism from self-advocates and scholars who believe...
Following are some of our statements, guides & policy papers. (To request other guides and Powerpoints please Contact us.) Land Acknowledgement (for Toronto events) Land acknowledgment Guides f…
For decades, education reformers have proposed academic performance, measured by standardized testing, as the solution to inequality. It doesn’t work, and it’s losing Democrats votes. But most important, it’s costing kids the opportunity to learn through play.
A Self-Advocate's Guide to the Americans with Disabilities Act - Autistic Self Advocacy Network
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a law that protects the rights of people with disabilities. The disability community fought hard to get the ADA passed into law, and we continue to fight hard to protect it. This year, we’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of the ADA becoming the…
Your Vote Counts: A Self-Advocate’s Guide to Voting in the U.S. - Autistic Self Advocacy Network
On election day, people pick who they want to represent them in elected office. This process is an important part of life in the community. It matters because people who make policy decisions change our everyday lives. Everything from curb cuts to anti-discrimination laws can change based on who holds…
NEWS New Works Conchita Hernández Legorreta, a disability rights activist and co-founder of the National Coalition of Latinx with Disabilities, writes about growing up as an undocumented blind Latina for Refinery29. “I continue to fight for institutional change and inclusion for disabled BIPOC immigrants,” she writes, ”yet I don’t pretend that this is enough, nor that being included in a capitalist, ableist, racist, xenophobic system is the answer to our problems.”
U.S. Access Board - ABA Standards (enhanced single file version)
The U.S. Access Board is a federal agency that promotes equality for people with disabilities through leadership in accessible design and the development of accessibility guidelines and standards for the built environment, transportation, communication, medical diagnostic equipment, and information technology.
U.S. Access Board - ADA Accessibility Standards (enhanced single file version)
The U.S. Access Board is a federal agency that promotes equality for people with disabilities through leadership in accessible design and the development of accessibility guidelines and standards for the built environment, transportation, communication, medical diagnostic equipment, and information technology.
Ticket Purchasing and Seating
Every section of The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park is ADA accessible with designated seats available in all seating areas. ADA seating for both transfer and non-transfer wheelchairs, companion and semi-ambulatory are available at each performance, and can be purchased online or through the Ticket Office. For questions regarding accessible seating or to request an accommodation, please contact our Ticket Office in advance at 619.235.0804 or tickets@sandiegosymphony.org.
Conference to Restore Humanity! 2022: Curated Resources
Join the Conference to Restore Humanity! 2022: System Reboot. Together, we will reimagine and recreate systems that support students and teachers toward a greater purpose and motivation.
Less-structured time in children's daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning
Executive functions (EFs) in childhood predict important life outcomes. Thus, there is great interest in attempts to improve EFs early in life. Many interventions are led by trained adults, including structured training activities in the lab, and less-structured activities implemented in schools. Such programs have yielded gains in children's externally-driven executive functioning, where they are instructed on what goal-directed actions to carry out and when. However, it is less clear how children's experiences relate to their development of self-directed executive functioning, where they must determine on their own what goal-directed actions to carry out and when. We hypothesized that time spent in less-structured activities would give children opportunities to practice self-directed executive functioning, and lead to benefits. To investigate this possibility, we collected information from parents about their 6–7 year-old children's daily, annual, and typical schedules. We categorized children's activities as “structured” or “less-structured” based on categorization schemes from prior studies on child leisure time use. We assessed children's self-directed executive functioning using a well-established verbal fluency task, in which children generate members of a category and can decide on their own when to switch from one subcategory to another. The more time that children spent in less-structured activities, the better their self-directed executive functioning. The oppos...
We hypothesized that time spent in less-structured activities would give children opportunities to practice self-directed executive functioning, and lead to benefits. To investigate this possibility, we collected information from parents about their 6–7 year-old children's daily, annual, and typical schedules. We categorized children's activities as “structured” or “less-structured” based on categorization schemes from prior studies on child leisure time use. We assessed children's self-directed executive functioning using a well-established verbal fluency task, in which children generate members of a category and can decide on their own when to switch from one subcategory to another. The more time that children spent in less-structured activities, the better their self-directed executive functioning. The opposite was true of structured activities, which predicted poorer self-directed executive functioning. These relationships were robust (holding across increasingly strict classifications of structured and less-structured time) and specific (time use did not predict externally-driven executive functioning). We discuss implications, caveats, and ways in which potential interpretations can be distinguished in future work, to advance an understanding of this fundamental aspect of growing up.
Our findings offer support for a relationship between the time children spend in less-structured and structured activities and the development of self-directed executive function. When considering our entire participant sample, children who spent more time in less-structured activities displayed better self-directed control, even after controlling for age, verbal ability, and household income. By contrast, children who spent more time in structured activities exhibited poorer self-directed EF, controlling for the same factors. The observed relationships between time use and EF ability were specific to self-directed EF, as neither structured nor less-structured time related to performance on externally-driven EF measures. These findings represent the first demonstration that time spent in a broad range of less-structured activities outside of formal schooling predicts goal-directed behaviors not explicitly specified by an adult, and that more time spent in structured activities predicts poorer such goal-directed behavior. Consistent with Vygotskian developmental theory and programs that build on that theory, such as Tools of the Mind, less-structured time may uniquely support the development of self-directed control by affording children with additional practice in carrying out goal-directed actions using internal cues and reminders. That is, less-structured activities may give children more self-directed opportunities. From this perspective, structured time could slow the development of self-directed control, since adults in such scenarios can provide external cues and reminders about what should happen, and when.
