Ability Profiling and School Failure: One Child's Struggle to be Seen as Competent

by Kathleen M. Collins

Ability Profiling and School Failure, Second Edition explores the social and contextual forces that shape the appearance of academic ability and disability and how these forces influence the perception of academic underachievement of minority students. At the book’s core is the powerful case study of a competent fifth grader named Jay, an African American boy growing up in a predominantly white, rural community, who was excluded from participating in science and literacy discourses within his classroom community.

In this new edition, researcher and teacher-educator Kathleen Collins situates the story of Jay’s struggle to be seen as competent within current scholarly conversations about the contextualized nature of dis/ability. In particular, she connects her work to recent research into the overrepresentation of minority students in special education, exploring the roles of situated literacies, classroom interactions, and social stereotypes in determining how some students come to be identified as "disabled." Ability Profiling and School Failure, Second Edition comprises a thorough investigation into the socially constructed nature of ability, identity, and achievement, illustrating the role of educational and social exclusion in positioning students within particular identities.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

258 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2003

Reviews

[Alaska Hults · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ability Profiling and School Failure (Second Edition) is a well-written book that performs, at different points in the book, different functions. For much of the book, we see into a 5th grade classroom where some of the children are included in the educational opportunities of the classroom by an obviously caring and capable teacher, and some are excluded by the same teacher for reasons that make all the sense on the world to the teacher. Sometimes we read what is happening to Jay and can say that we wouldn't do that in our classroom. Sometimes we read what is happening in the teacher's classroom and know that has happened in ours.

The author's writing is clear, concise, and engaging. Although I was tempted to skim in places, it soon becomes apparent that every example plays a specific role in our understanding of the way disability is socially constructed. Italicized text sets apart the explanatory text that helps the reader tie the classroom events to concepts of sociocultural theory--or the final chapter in which the author suggests the implications for our practice that her case study elicits.

The introductory chapter is very thorough in its explanation of sociocultural theory, and coming as it should at the front of the book, could turn readers unfamiliar with the theory away from the text. If that is you, skip the first chapter and begin with chapter 2. The explanation in the next 16 chapters are so clear that I think you can return to this chapter later with the concrete examples of Jay's story in mind and find yourself understanding Vygotsky's ideas on the second pass.

There is so much in Ability Profiling that begs to be used in the elementary and middle grade teacher preparation program to help students see the culture of the classroom into which they have been acculturated. We can't change our own behaviors when we genuinely aren't aware we are doing them--or are mistaken about their consequences. (The author is a former secondary education teacher, so I am sure it is appropriate for that context, too. My elementary/middle grades slant is my own.)

Unlike most academic texts, it is honestly worth it to read every page because it is much more than a story of how our words mark difference and do the work of drawing boundaries. Woven in between is story of a regular kid deeply engaged in the literacy work of school, home, and community in every moment where he is given the room to do so.

[Marcos Alcaine]

Ten years ago, Kathleen M. Collins published Ability Profiling and School Failure. One Child’s Struggle to Be Seen as Competent, a compelling examination of the interpretations that educators reach about students’ competence or incompetence, and how our educational system defines ability and disability. In this important book Collins presented her work with Jay, an African American fifth grader who, despite his enthusiasm and learning capabilities, was excluded from participating in science and literacy discourses within his classroom community.
The author drew from sociocultural theories that allowed her to consider how ability and competence are defined within the classrooms and in research. Rather than looking for a deficit or impairment within learners, a sociocultural approach let her look at the relationship between the environment and the individual to understand how they influence each other. In this second edition, Collins situates Jay’s story within current scholarly works about the overrepresentation of minority students in special education, exploring the roles of situated literacies, classroom interactions, and social stereotypes in determining how some students come to be identified as “disabled”, thus further reinforcing the conclusions she reached in the first edition of the book.
Collins presents her work with Jay in the form of a narrative case study. This format gives her the possibility to include the voices of not only Jay, but also his teacher Laura, and other family members like his grandmother and his cousin Takisha. It also allows her to include all the cultural, social, and contextual features, as well as her own emotions and reactions, as if they were all pieces of a well designed novel, which makes this book very entertaining from the reader’s perspective.
In the first chapter of the book, Collins sets up the theoretical framework for her study. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory seems to be the perfect fit for this research. Through a sociocultural lens, Jay’s labels of learning disabled and emotionally impaired are considered the product of a dialectical relationship between him and other individuals, especially his teacher Laura. Sociocultural theory understands cognitive processes as both social and individually constructed. Both the social and individual forces are interdependent and mutually constitutive, and are dependent on the tools and opportunities available. The implications of this framework are obvious and powerful: By considering identities of competence and disability as non static properties, Collins can easily question the school’s categorization of Jay as a disabled student and help him reposition himself as a valuable member of the classroom community.
From the beginning of her conversations with Collins, Laura describes Jay as a student with problems. She has referred him to the psychologist for special education services. On one hand, she defines Jay as a student who does not know how to conduct himself in his relationship with others in the school. His social interactions make Laura “diagnose” him as emotionally impaired. In terms of Jay’s academic capabilities, Laura classifies him as “learning disabled”. Jay’s biggest challenge in the classroom seems to be his writing. When Collins tries to understand the reasons why the science teacher has created such a clear picture of Jay from the very beginning, she discovers that Laura’s image of Jay is influenced by stereotypes. Laura bases her evidence about Jay’s “issues” on the idea that he comes from a troubled African American family that moved to the prominently white middle class town of Axelton from Andover City, which is considered a poorer and more dangerous area.
Laura’s diagnosis of Jay has visible consequences: Jay’s desk is physically separated from the majority of the other students’. Jay is also positioned as an outsider within the learning community. Despite his constant willingness to participate in classroom discussions, the teacher does not call on him as often as she does on other students. When she does pay attention to him, her responses often position him outside the circle of discourse. Due to her position of authority in the classroom community, Laura is able to strongly influence which routines and practices are followed by others. Each of her actions communicates her values to Jay’s classmates, who also perceive the boy as a student who does not complete his work and participates in the classroom in an inappropriate way.
Jay’s reactions to his teacher and classmates’ attempts to position him outside the classroom community change overtime. At first he tries to reposition himself entering the conversations in ways he perceives are more appropriate. However, as he sees that he is not successful, he starts trying to align himself with his classmates by responding in ways that oppose Laura’s authority. When he became even more isolated, his response was either to be silent even or more orally expressive.
The Jay that Collins sees through her observations in the classroom and in other contexts is very different. Within the classroom setting, Collins sees a student who learns best when he is given the opportunity to orally discuss concepts and science activities, but who is considered disabled partially because he is only allowed to prove his knowledge through formal written expression in standard English. Outside the school setting, Jay is an eager and capable learner who enjoys a variety of activities that go from writing blues songs to describing, analyzing and categorizing insects. In church, Jay was able to draw upon a range of ways of participating that were unavailable to him in Laura’s classroom. Here Jay was a responsible, contributing member, valued and supported by others in the community.
Throughout her research project, Collins tries to influence Laura’s perceptions of who Jay is and what he is able to contribute to the science class. Despite all her efforts, Laura does not modify her opinions and low expectations of the boy. The researcher’s relationship with the object of her investigation is, in my opinion, one of the greatest strengths of this book. From the beginning to the end of the narrative, Collins allows the reader to see the evolution of her emotions and her degree of implication in this case. Her objective as a researcher is not only to collect, analyze and present conclusions about her data, but also to modify Jay’s academic experience and self-image. Unfortunately, the boy’s achievements under Collins expert guidance do not allow him to modify his position within the school setting, but they do have an important impact in how Jay perceives himself as a learner.
Going beyond the relationship between students and the school system as a way to understand how they influence each other in defining Jay’s “disabilities”, Collins examines the larger societal context by interviewing different inhabitants of the town. The results of those interviews, and how they are incorporated into the new chapters that this second edition of the book provides, add a final important piece that I thought was missing in the first edition. I am referring to the role of race and racism. When Collins interviews the people of Axelton, she is surprised by the lack of diversity in people’s descriptions. Everybody agrees that “we see each other just as people. We don’t see color”. Everybody but Ruby Lee, director of a non-profit organization that helps people in need. She actually had a very different view. She described Axelton as a racially divided town where those “in the white areas get all the good stuff”. The race component is also addressed by Collins in light of recent bodies of research about the over representation of minority students in special education, and theories of deficit and stereotypes . From the beginning of the book, it struck me that race did not have an important role in Collins’ interpretation of Laura’s diagnosis of Jay. Only three students in Laura’s class are African American, Jay included. Both Laura and Collins are white also. In their descriptions of the town, many interviewees coincide that most problems and crimes that occur in Axelton “are instigated by gangs from Andover City”, a city with a higher African American population where Jay’s family came from. As I mentioned before, Laura judges Jay based on her ideas about his family and her interpretation of how his family life affects him. In her additional chapter of this second edition of the book, Collins acknowledges how our cultural and social contexts shape the categorizations we make about people. From one of the conversations Jay has with Collins, the researchers shows us that the boy knows that his dialect is not valued in school and it marks him as different.
In order to avoid the stigmatization of students like Jay, Collins recommends educators not to over emphasize the importance of the written standard English as the only way for students to demonstrate and acquire knowledge. Drawing from recent studies on multiliteracies and representation, the author reminds educators of the importance for students to be able to learn and express themselves through a variety of media.
The major contribution of Ability Profiling and School Failure is that it evidences the socially constructed nature of competence, ability and disability, and points out the impact that our educational system has on the social exclusion of minority students. Collin’s book is highly relevant in the field of education, especially for researchers and educators working with diverse students.

[Random Scholar · Rating 5 out of 5]

What started out as a series of observations on science inquiry lessons as part of a research team turned into one of the most powerful narrative analysis studies I had ever read. A young boy originally from Andover city moved back to his grandparents home town of Axleton city to begin fifth grade. His teacher immediately assumed he had a disability because he preferred hands on activities and collaborative class discussions over individual writing assignments. His teacher also immediately assumed he had a behavior problem after he reacted negatively to others (including her) excluding him from class activities and conversations. This is when Collins stepped in and decided to focus exclusively on helping understand how this boy got labeled and how she could offer counter evidence to the "evidence" that he had a learning disability and a behavior problem. This book documents the experiences Jay had from starting his fifth grade year at a new school to eventually finding his strengths and passions. This shows how he blossomed from being considered a student with a "behavior problem" and a "learning disability" for talking too much in class to a leader and a mentor at his local church group when he taught church dances and songs to younger children and began studying entomology over the summer.

Narrative analysis and ethnography allow Collins to show the complex nuanced ways that students of color like Jay sometimes get over referred as having behavior problems and learning disabilities. Collins examines the larger social issues such as the overwhelmingly negative portrayals of black people in Jay's Andover city before he came to Axleton city to begin fifth grade. Collins also shows how Jay was successful at asserting his intelligence in a system that largely tends to overlook the possibility of black and hispanic kids being gifted.

Every educator should read this book. Seriously.

[Bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5? Read for EDU-250. This was soooo interesting, although a little difficult to get into at first. It was really interesting to thinking about the idea of ability profiling and the ways in which students are constructed as an outsider within the classroom.

[Dani · Rating 5 out of 5]

sad, you should read it.

[Danielle Muise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the Second Edition of this book.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is very technical in its use of language and references to research. The story of Jay and how the writer related to him personalizes her writing, and kept me very engaged. She made me care about him, and used his experience to illustrate how damaging a well-meaning but insensitive educator can be for a child.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great story about how a relationship can consider all aspects of a student and ways to help them learn.