Chapter 3 Discussion

✍️ Prepared by
BJ Kenyon | Natasha Banks | TJ Haynes | Jared Abdirkin | Pamela Lofton McGeorge

📘 Course
EDD 828 - Organizational Theory & Change

🎯 Activity
Unit 3: Discussion Leadership Group Facilitation

📑 Slide Deck

If you would like a copy of the presentation, click to view the slide deck or review the embedded slides below.

👥 Class Activity

Overview

In the Organizational Theory for Equity and Diversity (Chapter 3) text, the authors describe a recurring pattern in how structural functionalism, an epistemology grounded in efficiency and regulated change rather than equity, responds to students or people who do not fit an institution's founding norm. Rather than questioning the norm itself, the system creates a separate program, track, or structure to manage the mismatch. The authors call these "bandages."

In the K-12 examples from the chapter, this shows up as programs like special education, Title I, English Language Learner services, gifted and talented programs, or Response to Intervention tiers. Each of these exists to support students who do not fit the system's original design, which the authors describe as white, upper-class, and male. The chapter argues that these bandages treat the student as the problem to be fixed, rather than asking why the system produced the mismatch in the first place (see the cycle diagrammed in Figure 3.2: a norm causes a student to fail, the student receives a bandage, results are short-term, and the underlying norm stays unchanged).

Instructions

The class will be divided into four breakout rooms. Each group will have one slide in a shared cloud Google Slides file, labeled with its group number. Add your group members' names to your slide. Click to access the file.

Each group will focus on the following educational setting:

Group 1: K–12 Education
Group 2: Higher Education
Group 3: K–12 Education
Group 4: Higher Education

As a group, identify two to three bandage programs within your assigned setting. A bandage program is any structure created to manage or support people who do not fit a norm, rather than a structure that changes the norm itself. Examples might include academic probation tracks or developmental coursework in higher education, or special education and RTI tiers in K–12.

For each bandage program you identify, include on your slide:

One or more clear images that tell the story of the program at a glance, such as a screenshot, logo, organizational chart snippet, or photo.
The name of the program or structure.
A one-line description of who it is aimed at and what norm it is patching around.

You have 15 minutes. We will reconvene in the main room when the breakout rooms close.

Reflection

When breakout rooms close, we will reconvene as a full class and go through each group's slide together. For each one, the group will walk us through their images and the choices behind them: Why this image? Why this program? What norm is it patching around?

As a class, we'll discuss: What would it look like to fix the norm instead of the symptom? Who benefits from the bandage staying in place?

We'll close by looking across K–12 and higher education and naming the tensions that surfaced. Where did the pattern look similar across the two settings? Where did it look different?

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