Jordan Pugh's Portfolio
APBP Internship Research
I led a semester-long collaborative research project in conjunction with my 2021 internship with APBP that evolved into a 17-page guide for educators to the best practices for creating accessible higher education in prison programs. We are still compiling research, but our progress helped fill a large gap in research. The document includes sections on terminology, signs of learning difficulties, and accommodating teaching strategies. APBP will share this document with the WVU HEPI Advisory Council and during WVU’s Higher Education in Prison (HEP) teacher training held each summer.
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Title Page
The accommodations guide is a working research draft currently available to all APBP core members. I am already thinking about document design: ways to create uniform connectedness and usability within a single document that draws on a plethora of sources. I crafted a descriptive title page to clarify the purpose of this document for readers not directly involved in the project.
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Table of Contents
I created a clean, simplistic table of contents, featuring the section title and page number with consistent alignment. The table of contents serves to boost the usability of the document by making it easy to navigate.
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Terminology
The terminology section ensures that educators have a shared understanding of the most inclusive ways to talk about neurodivergence. I purposefully present this section first to establish a foundational knowledge of the objectives of the document: to encourage accommodating learning environments in prison classrooms.
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Screening Protocols
The screening protocols portion of the guide is presented directly after the terminology section to build on the idea of good practice. It is vital to outline the language and conventions for testing learners for learning difficulties to build a program that cultivates trust from learners, donors, and the DOC.
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Signs of Neurodivergence
After learning about the ethics involved in testing for learning differences, educators can read about some of the signs of neurodivergence. Forming a team of educators well-equipped to recognize a potential learning difficulty is the first step to creating more inclusive HEP classrooms.
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Screening Questions
APBP is equipping a team of qualified social workers and psychologists to complete diagnostic assessments for learning difficulties. This baseline information will inform their content choices for assessment materials.
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Screening Questions
The potential screening questions ask learners to disclose prior diagnoses, demographics, and educational and work history. While this research focuses primarily on accommodating learning challenges, I also recognize the importance of physically accommodating in-prison classrooms.
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Teaching Strategies
The teaching strategies section is one of the most valuable components of the accommodations research. It outlines specific approaches educators may implement in their classrooms to accommodate all types of learners.
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Working Notes 01
The working notes section of the accommodations research is a living, evolving entity. All new findings are added to this section then organized based on where the content fits best in the guide.
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Working Notes 02
My research process started with compiling a plethora of reputable resources. I then read and synthesized each of the sources, a task I shared with a fellow APBP intern.
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Working Notes 03
I then paraphrase the findings using accessible language and add them to a section that is a good content match.
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Helpful Handouts
There are seven handouts published by the ERIC National Adult Literacy and Learning Disabilities Center featured in the guide. They provide more in-depth information on the signs of specific learning difficulties and screening material options for APBP and Higher Education in Prison programs.
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Works Cited
The Works Cited page is a work in progress. All sources are accredited and I am currently linking sources as they are mentioned throughout the guide to increase its usability.