Description
Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) impact millions of students with disabilities annually. IEPs are developed to ensure that a child attending public school with a condition covered by IDEA and support needs has access to an education and services. The purpose of this project is to understand how contradictions are manifesting in mediated IEP decision making processes. Contradictions and tensions are an inherent aspect of organizations, and prior to the COVID-19 pandemic contradictions existed in education. However, contradictions may be more apparent due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the strain placed on the U.S. education system by distanced teaching, learning, and working. A tension-based approach is used to look at the lived experiences of individuals participating in the IEP decision making process. The findings pointed to two contradictions (ability/disability and active participation/passive agreement) and two communicative issues (perceptions of IEP services and relationship maintenance). The theoretical and practical implications from this study exemplify the potential transitionary moments of U.S. education as more sites move from distance to in-person learning.
