Disentangling the Stratified Enactment of Curriculum Modifications in Individual Education Plans: A Policy Analysis

Abstract

Individual Education Plans (IEPs) have been central to special education systems for over twenty-five years, yet one of the core components—curriculum modifications—has remained largely unexamined. This dissertation addresses this gap by tracing the complex material-discursive forces that shape IEP decisions for elementary students in a large urban school system in Ontario, Canada. Using Barad's agential realism and diffractive analysis, this study moves beyond linear, individual-level explanations for the prolific use of curriculum modifications, towards a relational understanding of how curriculum design, grading practices, policy vacuums, resource scarcity, teacher dilemmas, family pressures, and broader socio-historical forces intra-act to produce the enactment of Modified IEPs. Drawing from interviews with 10 teachers undergoing the process of initiating curriculum modifications, focus-groups with 16 special education leaders and administrators, over 50 policy documents, and the school board’s quantitative dataset of the 2008-2022 cohort which has over 32,000 observations, this research identifies seven clusters of forces that structure the use and misuse of the curriculum modification policy. The findings of this study expose significant inconsistencies in how curriculum modifications are understood and enacted, racialized patterns in the initiation of “inappropriate” Modified IEPs, and evidence of stratified access to alternative forms of academic supports across socio-economic contexts and perception of student potential. This dissertation demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, the presence of an IEP is not simply a reflection of student need but a product of complex contextual forces that produce both its initiation and retention. Methodologically, this dissertation offers one of the few examples of how diffractive analysis can be applied in empirical research. Theoretically, this dissertation destabilizes several taken-for-granted concepts in both special education and Disability Studies in Education, and offers new questions for consideration: What is special education and who is it for? By centring complexity, embracing nuance, and cultivating an agonistic stance, this research serves as an invitation to rethink Ontario's IEP system in ways that serve students more justly.