Exploring How Religiously Affiliated Schools’ Ecological Systems Influence Policies on Students with Disabilities

The purpose of this exploratory multiple-case study was to gain an understanding of the ecological systems that are most influential in how religiously affiliated schools establish their policies that ultimately include or exclude students with disabilities in California. The theory guiding this study was Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory as it emphasizes that an individual’s development is influenced by dynamic interplay between individual characteristics and the broader social, cultural, and environmental contexts in which they live. The participants in this study were school leaders who were purposely selected as representatives of their primary and/or secondary religiously affiliated school located in California that will serve as the “Individual” in this study. Through document analysis, in-depth semi-structured one-on-one interviews with school leaders, and physical archives data collection methods, the ecological systems of religiously affiliated schools were examined to understand how legal and illegal disability based discrimination policies were established in their real-life context. This study found the most influential ecological systems for religiously affiliated schools when determining their policies and procedures regarding students with disabilities were the chronosystem, macrosystem, and mesosystems.