Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education

Aydin Bal

Professor, Global Engagement Office Director

abal@wisc.edu

(608) 698-4139

403 Education Building

1000 Bascom Mall

Madison, WI 53706

Bal, Aydin

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Aydin Bal is a professor of special education at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Dr. Bal’s research focuses on the interplay between culture, learning, and mental health across local and global education systems. He examines the social justice issues in education, family-school-community-university collaboration, organizational innovation, and future making. He has developed the Culturally Responsive Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports framework and the Learning Lab methodology. In Learning Labs, local stakeholders (educators, students, families, policy makers, and community representatives), especially those from historically marginalized communities, design and implement culturally responsive behavioral support systems. Learning Lab has been implemented in 15 public schools and teacher education institutions in Florida, Kansas, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin in the United States and internationally in the Anishinaabe Nation, Brazil, and Turkey.

As a practitioner and researcher, Dr. Bal has worked with youth from minoritized communities experiencing academic and behavioral problems in schools, hospitals, and prisons from the United States, South Sudan, Syria, Iraq, the Russian Federation, Turkey, the Anishinaabe Nation, Malawi, and Brazil. Dr. Bal has worked with several education agencies as a consultant including Madison Metropolitan School District, Sun Prairie Area School District, and Texas Education Agency. He has published in leading journals in education, learning sciences, and behavioral health including American Educational Research Journal, Review of Educational Research, Review of Research in Education, Cognition and Instruction, the Journal of Special Education, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Teachers College Records, and Urban Education. In 2017, Dr. Bal received the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Review of Research Award. In 2018-2019, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship. Dr. Bal is the recipient of the 2019 AERA Scholars of Color Early Career Award, the 2022 AERA Cultural Historical Special Interest Group Early Career Award, and the 2023 Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) – Division for Research – Distinguished Researcher from Underrepresented Groups Award.

Education

  • PhD Special Education: Cultural-Linguistic Diversity and Behavioral Disorders, Arizona State University, 2009
  • MA Behavioral Disorders, Arizona State University, 2003
  • BS Psychology, Hacettepe University, 1997

Select Publications

  • Bal, A., Afacan, K., Clardy, T., & Cakir, H. (2021). Inclusive future making: Building a culturally responsive behavioral support system at an urban middle school with local stakeholders. Cognition and Instruction, 29(3), 275-305. Online Publication/Abstract.
  • Bal, A., Betters-Bubon, J., & Fish, R. (2019). A multilevel analysis of statewide disproportionality in exclusionary discipline and the identification of emotional disturbance. Education and Urban Society, 51(2), 247-268.
  • Bal, A., Afacan, K., & Caki, H. I. (2019). Transforming schools from the ground-up with local stakeholders: Implementing Learning Lab for inclusion and systemic transformation at a middle school.. Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education, 50(3), 359-387. Online Publication/Abstract.
  • Bal, A. (2018). Culturally responsive positive behavioral interventions and supports: A process-oriented framework for systemic transformation. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 40(2), 144-174. Online Publication/Abstract.
  • Bal, A., Afacan, K., & Cakir, H. I. (2018). Culturally responsive school discipline: Implementing Learning Lab at a high school for systemic transformation. American Educational Research Journal, 55(5), 1007-1050. Online Publication/Abstract.
  • Bal, A. (2017). System of disability. Critical Education, 8(6), 1-27. Online Publication/Abstract.
  • Bal, A., & Trainor, A. A. (2016). Culturally responsive research rubric for experimental intervention studies: The development of a rubric for paradigm expansion.. Review of Educational Research, 86(2), 319-359.
  • Bal, A. (2016). From intervention to innovation: A cultural-historical approach to racial disproportionality in special education.. Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education, 47, 409-427. Online Publication/Abstract.
  • Bal, A., & Trainor, A. A. (2016). Culturally responsive experimental intervention studies in special education: The development of a rubric.. Review of Educational Research, 86(2), 319-359. Online Publication/Abstract.
  • Engeström, Y., Sannino, A., Bal, A., Lotz-Sisitka, H., Pesanayi, T., Chikunda, C., & Lee, Y. J. (2016). Agentive learning for sustainability and equity: Communities, cooperatives and social movements as emerging foci of the learning sciences. C.-K. Looi, J. Polman, U. Cress & P. Reimann (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) 2016, 2, 1048-1054. Singapore: ISLS.

Select Presentations

  • Engeström, Y., & Bal, A. (2022, June). Expansive learning and transformative agency for equity and sustainability: Formative interventions in six continents. presented at the The annual meeting of the International Society of the Learning Sciences, Tokyo, Japan.
  • Bal, A. (2022, June). Inclusive future making to address the racialization of behavioral problems in schools. Annual meeting presented at the The annual meeting of the International Society of the Learning Sciences, Tokyo, Japan.
  • Bal, A. (2022, April). Making decolonizing futures for justice and sustainability. Paper presented at the The annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), San Diego, CA.
  • Bal, A., & Bird Bear, A. (2021, August). Indigenous Learning Lab: Building culturally responsive behavioral support systems in the United States. Paper presented at the , Natal, Brazil.
  • Bal, A. (2021, April). Learning Lab: An enacted utopia through the fourth-generation activity theory. Paper presented at the The annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
  • Bal, A., Afacan, K., & Cakir, H. (2019, July). A multi-site formative intervention study for inclusive organizational design in the United States. Paper presented at the 35th European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) Colloquium, Edinburgh, UK.
  • Bal, A. (2019, March). Tuhaf zamanlarda psikoloji: System gelistirme ve gelecek insaasi icin kulturel psikoloji (Psychology in interesting times: Cultural psychology for collective systemic design and future making). Keynote/Plenary Address presented at the Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey.
  • Bal, A. (2019, February). Construindo coalisões universidade/escola/comunidade sob a perspectiva da justiça social nos Estados Unidos (Builiding university-school-community coalitions for social justice in the United States). Keynote/Plenary Address presented at the XII Diálogos desde el Sur, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
  • Bal, A., Afacan, K., Cakir, H., Clardy, T., Love, L., & Ko, D. (2018, April). Radical possibilities of transforming schools with local stakeholders: A formative intervention study for expansive learning. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New York, NY.
  • Bal, A. (2018, April). What’s Marx got to do with the racialization of disability? Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New York, NY.

Select Awards and Honors

  • Distinguished Researcher from Underrepresented Groups Award, Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), 2023
  • Cultural Historical Special Interest Group Early Career Award, American Educational Research Association (AERA), 2022
  • Early Career Award, American Educational Research Association (AERA), 2019
  • Senior Scholars Award, The Fulbright Program, (2018, 2019)
  • Outstanding Mentor, Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018
  • Review of Research Award, American Educational Research Association (AERA), 2017
  • Distinguished Achievement Award for Community-Engaged Scholarship, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2016
  • Distinguished Achievement Award for Community-Engaged Scholarship, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2016