Aydin Bal

About

Aydin Bal is a professor of special education at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. His research focuses on the interplay between culture, learning, and mental health across local and global education systems. He examines social justice issues in education, family-school-community-university collaboration, organizational innovation, and future making. Dr. Bal has developed the Culturally Responsive Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports framework and the Learning Lab methodology, which involves local stakeholders designing and implementing culturally responsive behavioral support systems. These Learning Labs have been implemented in multiple public schools and teacher education institutions across the United States and internationally, including in the Anishinaabe Nation, Brazil, and Turkey. As both a practitioner and researcher, he has worked with youth from minoritized communities experiencing academic and behavioral problems in various settings such as schools, hospitals, and prisons in the United States, South Sudan, Syria, Iraq, the Russian Federation, Turkey, Malawi, and Brazil. Dr. Bal has collaborated with several education agencies as a consultant and has published extensively in leading journals in education, learning sciences, and behavioral health. His contributions have been recognized through numerous awards, including the 2017 AERA Review of Research Award, a Fulbright fellowship, and the 2023 Council for Exceptional Children Distinguished Researcher…

Research topics

• Sociology
• Social Science
• Pedagogy
• Political Science
• Public relations
• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Law
• Gender studies
• Developmental psychology

Selected publications

• Transformative agency for justice: addressing racial disparity of school discipline with the Indigenous Learning Lab

  Race Ethnicity and Education · 2021 · 22 citations

  In the U.S. school systems, Native American students receive harsher and more frequent school discipline than White counterparts. Exclusionary discipline may result in adverse academic, social, and life outcomes. There is an urgent need for creating an inclusive, equity-oriented learning environment where Native American students’ identities, well-being, and dignity are promoted and nurtured. To develop a culturally responsive behavioral support system aimed to address racial disparity in school…

  DOI

• Expanding Transformative Agency: Learning Lab as a Social Change Intervention for Racial Equity in School Discipline

  Teachers College Record The Voice of Scholarship in Education · 2021 · 20 citations

  Background In the United States, students of color are more likely to receive disciplinary exclusion compared with their White peers. The racial disproportionality in exclusionary school discipline (e.g., office discipline referrals and suspension) marginalizes students from nondominant communities and further aggravates inequalities in academic, social, and behavioral outcomes. As a socially, historically, and geographically situated inequity issue, addressing racial disparities in disciplinary…

  DOI

• Creating Thirdspace: Indigenous Learning Lab to Transform a School Discipline System

  American Educational Research Journal · 2024-07-30 · 15 citations

  article

  Racial disproportionality in school discipline is an enduring systemic problem. This study is based on a collaboration with 14 school stakeholders: American Indian students, parents, community members, and educators at a high school in a community-driven problem-solving process called Indigenous Learning Lab (ILL). ILL members addressed the root causes of the racialized school discipline and created a new school discipline system. Using critical geography and decolonizing methodology as the theo…

  PublisherDOI

• Learning lab as a utopian methodology for future making: decolonizing knowledge production toward racial justice in school discipline

  Mind Culture and Activity · 2023-01-02 · 15 citations

  article

  Students from minoritized communities in US public schools face harsher exclusionary discipline, leading to negative academic, social, and emotional outcomes. Racial disproportionality in school discipline is a critical inequity that requires ecologically valid solutions with local stakeholders. The Indigenous Learning Lab (ILL) was implemented to address racial disproportionality that American Indian students experience at a rural high school serving a band of an Anishinaabe nation in the Unite…

  PublisherDOI

• Spatial othering: Examining residential areas, school attendance zones, and school discipline in an urbanizing school district

  Education Policy Analysis Archives · 2020 · 15 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Drawn from interdisciplinary perspectives of special education, critical geography, and education policy, in this study, we examined the spatial patterns of residential areas, school attendance zones, and school discipline rates of an urbanizing school district in Wisconsin to understand the construction of spatial “Other.” We measured the city’s dissimilarity index to examine racial and economic segregation between neighborhoods and elementary schools. We also measured the school district suspe…

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Dosun Ko

  Santa Clara University

  15 shared

• Dian Mawene

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  13 shared

• Alfredo J. Artiles

  Stanford University

  9 shared

• Halil İbrahim Çakır

  Giresun University

  8 shared

• Aaron Bird Bear

  7 shared

• Kemal Afacan

  Artvin Coruh University

  6 shared

• Linda Orie

  6 shared

• Morgan Mayer-Jochimsen

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  2000

• M.S., Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  1996

• B.A., Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  1994

Awards & honors

• Review of Research Award , American Educational Research Ass…
• Fulbright fellowship (2018-2019)
• AERA Scholars of Color Early Career Award , American Educati…
• AERA Cultural Historical Special Interest Group Early Career…
• Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) – Division for Resear…

Similar researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Allison Lombardih-29
• Malachy Bishoph-26
• Andrea Rupparh-22