Fostering Inclusive Practices in Educational Policy Reform

In this paper, we examine how a group of diverse stakeholders in a predominantly White school district expanded their practice of inclusion through an intentional co-design process.The Aleph School District (ASD) in New England, U.S., co-designed a protocol for addressing discrimination and harassment, a persistent concern affecting historically marginalized students with and without disabilities.The school district partnered with the local university and employed the Learning Lab intervention (Bal et al., 2016;2018), an inclusive, process-oriented methodology to enable the local stakeholders most impacted the chance to better understand and address their concerns.Our analysis of data suggests that, in addition to producing a needed and useful protocol, this process expanded authentic inclusion of student voice in the school district.Further, we identify practices that fostered meaningful inclusion within the Learning Lab and tangible and intangible outcomes that extended beyond the Learning Lab space.