Disability Intersectionality And Belonging In Special Education

Disability, Intersectionality, and Belonging in Special Education focuses on preparing educators who use socioculturally sustaining practices, curricula, and instruction through an intersectional lens. This book empowers preservice students and special education practitioners and administrators to meet the needs of disabled individuals. Understanding the full range of requirements relating to socioculturally sustaining practices is imperative to working with individuals with disabilities as well as with their families and caregivers. Being able to understand and explain this complex issue to others is important and often necessary. Social injustices in special education are historical and systemic. Special education practitioners are typically unaware of the importance of intersectional differences because they have been prepared to address cultural perspectives only during awareness days or through specific units in curricula. At other times they discuss the topic diagnostically—for example, as part of an educational plan or when teaching English as a second language. Other issues stem from the value system of the special education practitioners themselves; some are not willing to engage in these concepts, while others prioritize treating all students the same by using the terms “fairness,” “equity,” and “colorblindness” to justify this treatment. Even when special educator practitioners attempt to address injustices on behalf of their students, they tend to center on only the student’s disability, which means they are ignoring or erasing other aspects of their students’ identities. These concerns highlight the importance of building the sociocultural competence of our teaching force. This book will help practitioners build this competence in their own spheres of influence.

Now in its second edition, Rethinking Disability introduces new and experienced teachers to ethical framings of disability and strategies for effectively teaching and including students with disabilities in the general education classroom. Grounded in a disability studies framework, this text’s unique narrative style encourages readers to examine their beliefs about disability and the influence of historical and cultural meanings of disability upon their work as teachers. The second edition offers clear and applicable suggestions for creating dynamic and inclusive classroom cultures, getting to know students, selecting appropriate instructional and assessment strategies, co-teaching, and promoting an inclusive school culture. This second edition is fully revised and updated to include a brief history of disability through the ages, the relevance of current educational policies to inclusion, technology in the inclusive classroom, intersectionality and its influence upon inclusive practices, working with families, and issues of transition from school to the post-school world. Each chapter now also includes a featured "voice from the field" written by persons with disabilities, parents, and teachers.

The purpose of this volume is to explore personal, family and theoretical constructions of inclusion and offer evidence-based strategies and resources to foster parent-professional home-school collaborative partnerships.

This book addresses the tensions of existing theories and practices of inclusive education from an international perspective. Adopting Disability Critical Race Theory in Education (DisCrit) and Critical Disability Studies (CDS), the authors expose how race neutral knowledge characterizes inclusive education and exhorts readers to consider how intersectional perspectives provide more complex and nuanced understandings about ways in which racism and ableism simultaneously circulate as intersecting oppressions in schools and societies and across geographical borders. The authors begin by engaging in a critical analysis of the genesis of inclusive education before exploring how existing policies and practices of inclusive education in the global North evade the collusive nature of oppressions faced by minoritized students with disabilities and are uncritically transferred into the global South. Ultimately, the book encourages readers to reconceptualize inclusive education and move towards developing and sustaining transformative notions of global justice.

In Understanding the Boundary between Disability Studies and Special Education through Consilience, Self-Study, and Radical Love, the authors explore what it means to engage in boundary work at the intersection of traditional special education systems and critical disability studies in education. The book consists of fifteen groundbreaking accounts that challenge dominant medicalized discourses about what it means to exist within and around special education systems that create space for new conceptions of what it means to teach, lead, learn, and exist within a conciliatory space driven by radical love and disability justice principles. The book pushes readers to consider how their own personal, professional and programmatic future transformational actions can be driven by disruption and the desire for freedom from the hegemony of traditional special education and White and Ability supremacy.

"Discover an innovative framework for addressing intersectionality within educational spaces designed to combat the cumulative effects of systemic marginalization due to race, gender, disability, class, sexual orientation, and other identity-based labels. Highlighting diverse ways of knowing, this book will generate insights that can inform more equitable policy analysis, research, and practice"--

This book provides a comprehensive exploration of critical topics in multicultural special education. Filled with case studies, objectives, and summaries to support deeper learning, the chapters discuss privilege and power in K-12 school systems, effective and differentiated instruction, culturally competent IEPs and transition plans, and appropriate assessment. Drawing from seminal multicultural education and culturally sustaining pedagogies, this essential text helps educators develop the skills necessary to affirm and honor identities while meeting the instructional needs of culturally diverse students with disabilities.

This work's mission is to integrate the fields of disability studies and inclusive education. It focuses on the broad, foundational topics that comprise disability studies (culture, language, history, etc.) and moves into the more practical topics normally associated with inclusive education.