Inquiry Oasis Season 3: Dr. Desiree Vega Part 2

Listen to part 2 of the two part episode with Dr. Desiree Vega. Dr. Vega and Dean Deil-Amen continue to explore the intersection of identity, advocacy, and purpose in the field of school psychology. 

Dr. Vega discusses her research findings, recommended readings, and an upcoming book release with her colleague Jaclyn Wolf at San Francisco State University. The book is titled Culturally Responsive Assessment and Intervention Practices with Emergent Bilingual Students and should be available for purchase later this Fall.

Dr. Vega's recommended readings:

• Educating Emergent Bilinguals by Ofelia García
• National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) best practices, 7th Edition with 2022 revisions

Transcript

Jeffrey Anthony:

Welcome to the Inquiry Oasis, the University of Arizona College of Education's podcast, here in the heart of the Sonoran Desert. We bring you conversations with our esteemed faculty members and staff whose research impacts lives from Southern Arizona to the far reaches of the globe. We explore the transformative power of education in this border town where diverse cultures and ideas converge, weaving a tapestry of innovation with compassion and a sense of wonder. So, join us as we journey through the sands of curiosity, unearthing insights that enrich and inspire. Sit back and relax. As we invite you to dive into the inquiry oasis.

Dean Deil-Amen:

In last week's episode, we introduced Dr. Desiree Vega and learned about her journey into becoming a school psychologist and then an academic researcher. In today's episode, we will dive into what the most surprising results of her research have been, as well as the importance of having and training school psychologists equipped to work with bilingual populations.

What would you say might be one of the most surprising results of the research you've done?

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Yeah, I think, you know, like I mentioned, like the bilingual, the bilingual school psychologists who did their training in, in bilingual programs, them feeling sort of similar in some ways to school psychologists who just went to a regular school psychology program. 

Um, I think the, the assumption, um, which is, you know, again, part of why I've been doing some of this, this work is, well, if you went to a bilingual training program, you know, you should feel very well prepared. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Um, and that's certainly not the case. And we have to think about the limitations, right? Like, even if there is a specialization, a bilingual specialization, um, you know, maybe there's three classes, three extra classes that focus explicitly on bilingual training out of, you know, all the courses that students are taking in a, you know, two year period, um, and maybe their practicum and or internship is under the supervision of bilingual school psychologists, which has been, you know, shared as the most rewarding training experience for to be well prepared as a bilingual school psychologist. But it is still fairly limited in scope.

And so I think, you know, thinking like long term, right, like. Again, like everyone needs this training and not just those who speak another language. Um, it needs to be, you know, integrated into the whole curriculum. So that's definitely been, you know, surprising in some ways. 'cause I think, again, like that assumption is, well you got the training, you should feel like so well prepared.

Dean Deil-Amen:

Right, right. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

And there probably is, you know, I'm not doing like these large scale studies, but there, you know, maybe there is, you know, significant differences between those who went to a bilingual training program and those who didn't. But there's still areas where they're like, no, I still really don't feel prepared, which is concerning.

And you can only teach so much, right? I, I, you know, we always are frank with our students. You're here for, you know, if they're in the specialist level program, two years, their third year they're on internship, if they're in the PhD program, four years of coursework and clinical training. And then, you know, ideally the fifth year is internship and dissertation.

So, it is still limited time and we can't teach everything. And so of course when you go into the field, there are things that you're not going to be prepared for until you have that situation happen. You can be a school psych for 10 years and then you face this new situation and you're like, oh my God.

Like, I don't know what to do. 

Dean Deil Amen:

Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Um, and the field is constantly changing and, you know, best practices are changing and whatnot. But yeah, I just think that it is concerning to go into the field and largely just feel like so unprepared. But I guess something else that is surprising, but maybe not so much, is just, um, so I received a Spencer Grant in 2023, I believe, and that was focusing specifically on Arizona and looking at school psychologists assessment practices with bilingual students.

And through, you know, the eyes of the Arizona's English only law, which, you know, that's a whole other podcast. 

Dean Deil Amen:

Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Episode, but I'm sure, um, well, how do you consider culture and language? How do you consider the limitations that these students do not largely have access to bilingual, um, you know, dual language education. 

Dean Deil Amen:

Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Um, they're in SEI programs. There's a lot of limitations with SEI and how, you know, structured English immersion and how students are getting like English language development. So, there's all those sorts of challenges. And at the end of last year, and again, it's not totally surprising, but I think like there's a, there's such a little consideration for the language difference piece.

Dean Deil-Amen:

Right.

Dr. Desiree Vega:

And how that might impact how a student scores on like an IQ test or how they're performing in the classroom, why their behaviors may be a certain way. 

Dean Deil Amen:

Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

There, so it's like we're, we're just looking at the kids in this isolated situation and not the larger context that they're functioning in, that, you know, they may have migrated, a family member may have been deported, they may have not had access to English until they started school in, in kindergarten.

Um, they maybe didn't go to preschool. You know, there's all these factors that can contribute to difference in learning. Um, and it's just like seen as a deficit. I think too, like the language piece is probably not as surprising because that has been an area where I've done a lot of training for school psychologists, but I think like culturally, or even like racially, a lot of people don't think, or they're, or school psychologists are not sharing how like a student's race or ethnic identity may play a role in some of the challenges that they may be having.

Like they may have experienced discrimination. All those things like that was never brought up with, you know, 20 folks that we spoke to. Um, and so I think, you know, there's some work emerging on like ratio linguistics that I want to delve deeper in. But I think because my own experience of kind of being othered as a Latina, like, oh, how are you?

Like, you probably have had this experience too, but like, you know, I don't fit this image of what. people think, especially in the Southwest, right? Especially being Black Latina, like, oh, I just assumed you were so and so, and so for me, I'm automatically thinking like, oh, how does this student's race, ethnicity, language?

Like all of those things, like how does this play a role, um, in the challenges that they're having? You know, is it a disability or are there larger systemic factors going on that are playing a role in why they're having these challenges? But, a lot of the school psychologists are not really thinking.

It's more of like, okay, how are they doing academically? Why are they struggling? And let's figure out a plan. Well, that plan is kind of half-baked because we're not considering, again, the larger context of who they are as an individual, the system that they're, you know, living in, the challenges that they're having outside of school that may play an impact in their, you know, educational or behavioral challenges.

So, I think that's surprising. It's definitely frustrating, but an area that I think, you know, because I do so many trainings for school psychologists in this area that I'm trying to incorporate more so that there is a larger attention to the students', like racial background, their ethnic background, you know, and language and you know, so many other factors that I think are really important.

Dean Deil-Amen:

Yeah, I can see how the, your approach, your qualitative approach is really benefiting you because you understand so much about the context in which students live, and ultimately the context their family lives in. And that's really what being student centered is all about. You know whether it's about race or culture or even religion or other aspects of culture and the social context are so important for just serving students in the way that that's needed to improve their school achievement, their trajectory in life, right?

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Mm-hmm. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

And so. I'm glad that someone like you is doing these trainings and is an expert in this field. You mentioned some areas of support that the National Academy of Education, Spencer Foundation, has funded this research leading to these applied trainings. You mentioned SEP, which is Office of Special Education Program Programs by the federal government, and we know that a lot of those programs are in jeopardy right now, and so this is an example of seeing the real value of that kind of funding for people like you, for school psychologists, and also for University of Arizona because this is a big part of our land grant mission. 

Dr. Desiree Vega

Mm-hmm. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

To make sure we have a workforce that meets the needs of our population. Um, and this is a, just a prime example that shows the value of that mission in our university.

So, let's see. Anything else you want to talk about in terms of the value of what you do in your field and in your scholarship and research? 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Well, I think because you know, my leaving Texas State, which I love working there, but again, I wanted to work with PhD students. I think that's been the, you know, part that is probably most rewarding, like is no surprise. I love mentoring students receive mentoring awards. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Exactly. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Um, I dedicate a lot of time to my doctoral students and a lot of them are doing. They're not doing the exact same work that I am doing. But you know, majority of my students are Latinx and Black and they are interested in, you know, they have similar passions, right?

They want to serve their communities. And so I think by, you know, me doing this work, my own experiences, identities, right? I think that's something that is, you know, attracts students. To the program and, and to work with me and being able to have, you know, Afro-Latina professor, right? Like I'm a unicorn, right?

There's not, especially in school psychology. Um, and so working with these students, supporting them and then, you know, seeing them through their own dissertation where they are doing work that is meaningful to them, and that is also going to benefit, you know, underrepresented communities, Black students, Latinx students, immigrant students, is really incredible. I think that's, you know, one of the, the best parts of this job. And then to see them go out into the field, you know, make an impact. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Give back to their community, you know, some are from Tucson and wanna stay here and give back to the community. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Right. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Which is. You know, what we love to see. So, some go on to be faculty members, and you know, they're doing their own research and mentoring students. So, I think like that kind of, um, the pipeline, right? The cycle of, you know, the work that I'm doing is, you know, influenced by my experiences by my advisor, and other faculty that I worked with. 

And so being able to train the future generations and, you know, to see them go out there and, and, and do this work that they're passionate about. I think that's something that is, you know, incredibly rewarding and keeps me going because it's not, it's not always easy to, to do this work. And, um, especially again in, in the political climate where there's, you know, attacks on DEI and you know, this English only law that's been in place for over 20 years, there's 25 years, I should say, you know, all these attacks on, you know, our, our identities. Um, it does make it hard to, to do this work sometimes, but yeah, students are, you know, part of why I do it.

Dean Deil-Amen:

It's clear how motivated you are, right? And, and I could see how your students are, are probably so grateful to have you, and that keeps you going every day.

Are there any, uh, we often ask our podcast guests about books or papers, articles that have been inspiring to you or are particularly meaningful in your field? 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Yeah, so there is such limited work on. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

You know, anything related to like multiculturalism, diversity, bilingualism in school, psychologists, there's like very few, you know, I have all of them. There's probably five to seven of them, like specific to school psychology. Right?

And so, you know, handbook of Multicultural School Psychology is a really great resource that, you know, I use for my research, but also for my teaching. Our professional association, NASP, National Association of School Psychologists publishes like this best practices volume.

I mean, it's, it's massive, right? Um, every X number of years, you know, every 10 or so years. And so, the latest iteration, um, like 2022 or something like that was really centered on social justice. So, integrating it into every aspect of school psychology across that, you know, behemoth of, of volume. I mean, there's four thick volumes 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Oh, wow.

Dr. Desiree Vega:

That are part or three, three. Thick volumes that are part of it. Um, and so I contributed a chapter, um, but also like all of the chapters because they focus on social justice is something that has been really helpful for my own learning, for my research, for the trainings I do, but also for teaching as well.

Especially, I teach a class that's called Diversity in School Psychology. And so we talk about, you know, different identities, different challenges, and so that's something that I pull from for my teaching, um, because there's so little in school psychology, I do pull from a lot of other fields, especially like bilingual education, teacher education, um, because there's a lot more work related to like bilingualism.

Um, so the book like Educating Emergent Bilinguals by Ofelia García has been a really amazing book. Um, hopefully there's another volume coming out soon, but it's just been, you know, like contextually, when we think about the experiences of our emergent bilingual students or you know, multilingual students, um, from start to finish, I think it's a really great book. It's definitely like teacher ed focus, but I think like having, you know, I can't just have like a school psych lens to, you know, 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Right. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Functioning in, in the larger school system. And so pulling from like teacher education and bilingual education has been super helpful. Um, and if I can do a quick plug.

Dean Deil-Amen:

 Sure. Go ahead. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Me and a former student who's a, she's a faculty member, Jaclyn Wolf, is a faculty member at San Francisco State University in their clinical psychology program. Um, we just finished an edited book at the end of June, um, that's, you know, slated to come out this year. Um, and it's called Culturally Responsive Assessment and Intervention Practices with Bilingual Students. Emergent Bilingual Students. Um, so we have 15 chapters, scholars all in the field of school psychology. Some practitioners as well. And really, again, integrating that culturally responsive lens to how we think about intervention development with school, with, um, excuse me, with bilingual students, you know, for their math needs, for their reading literacy needs.

Um, and also from an intervention, or excuse me, an assessment standpoint of, you know, if I'm looking at autism. The student may have autism, you know, how do I approach that for a bilingual student? Because there really isn't a lot of guidance out there. Again, there's kind of this uniform standardized approach that is not applicable to all students, and so we look at a lot of different disability areas, you know, intellectual disability, specific learning disability, working with interpreters, you know, to serve our families and students.

Collaborating with families and students, bilingual families and students. And so, we're really excited for the book to come out. Uh, you know, again, just a, a quick plug. Um, we've been working around the clock to get this, you know, get this out there and there isn't really a lot of, again, like a lot of support out there and a lot of guidance, you know, in, in book form.

And so, I think it'll be a great resource. I hope it'll be a great resource for, you know, students, practitioners, faculty, researchers, and everyone in between. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

That's great. It's great to hear that our college is putting out, you know, cutting edge research like this and really sharing it across the country and even the world. Uh, with regard to this really important area. Repeat the title for us. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Yes. Hopefully I get it right. Okay. Culturally responsive Intervention and assessment Practices with Emergent Bilingual Students. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Excellent, excellent. My final question might be a little bit challenging. You know, you mentioned your expertise and, and I think a lot of times some people have the assumption that if you are an expert in an area that really does focus on diverse populations, right? Maybe diverse school psychologists, that that somehow doing that work is to the detriment of other populations of students. Right? That might be part of the more dominant culture. Right? Is there an argument to be made around the idea that the work that you do does benefit all school psychologists? All students in our schools and in our communities. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Yeah, that is a big question. Um, and a hard question. Yeah. I mean, I think for certainly. It does, um, it does value everyone. And I, I think sometimes, like when I, I think about when I do trainings, like I feel like some of the things that I am sharing, I'm like, this applies to every student.

Dean Deil-Amen:

Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

And also we need to be, you know, maybe we need to look a little bit more closely, right. So, we think. You know, a scenario I'll give you, um, you're a school psychologist. You're assessing a student, you know, doing IQ tests, right? The expectation, you know, we're sitting across from each other. The student is actively paying attention, listening to the directions, not crawling under the table, not, you know, all those things, right?

But, you know, when I, when I explain these things to, you know, to school psychologists, I'm like, did the student understand the directions? That is so important because you take test, you score this test and it has such large implications, right? If the score is, you know, 80, you know, 85 to one 15 is generally average IQ.

If it falls below that, that student is going to be stigmatized in a certain way or perceived in a certain way. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

And especially black and brown kids, right? They're gonna be perceived as less than, right? They're subpar intelligence, um, and what implications that has. And so we really have to be like even more attentive.

Dean Deil-Amen:

Right? 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

This applies to any student. Was a student actually paying attention and were they calling under the table? Were they running around? Like that's a, uh, you know, something that any school psychologist needs to know for any student they work with. But it becomes even more high stakes, um, because we see disproportionate placement, like overrepresentation of Black students, Indigenous students, you know, to some extent Latinx students in special education or disciplined. 

Um, so it becomes even more important to look at those differences because there have been all these, you know, other issues that have been happening for so long, um, with students not getting their needs met. Um, being labeled as, you know, bad kids being pushed out school, frankly, unfairly, right?

And so, I think, you know, that would be one thing that you know applies to all school psychologists that, you know, maybe, you know, have their own biases. And so, then they're just like, oh, well the kid just couldn't do the task, and not really understanding like, where is their language development at this stage in time?

Is it realistic to think that they're going to understand because of where their language development is at. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

I see. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

And that's not a deficit. They just haven't had sufficient time 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Exactly. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

To catch up. And so, there's, they're so, like I could go on and on forever, as you can see, but it's so layered and so many people don't get this training.

And so, then they just approach every student the same. And to some extent, you do need to approach the students the same or similarly, but there's these other layers that you have to pull back to really think about like, does this accurately reflect the student's ability or is there something else going on here?

Dean Deil-Amen:

Right, right. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

So hopefully that answers the question to some. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Yeah, no, thank you for that explanation. I mean, it really. It helps me understand, I hope it helps our listeners understand. I know that the more aware and sensitive I am to one population of people, makes me actually increasingly more competent to deal with other populations.

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Mm-hmm. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Because I've just increased my awareness and sensitivity, which is important in fields like education and psychology. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Mm-hmm.

Dean Deil-Amen:

And so, thank you so much for being a guest. I've learned so much. I hope our listeners have learned so much. I hope people thinking about school psychology have an increased interest in the field because we need school psychologists and we need people training school psychologists as well, and doing that important research. So, thank you so much Dr. Desiree Vega for being a guest on Inquiry Oasis today. 

Dr. Desiree Vega:

Thank you so much for having me.