[Dis]Ableing Educational Inequities: A Disability Studies in Education Perspective
Main Article Content
Keywords
Race to the Top, inclusive education
Abstract
Disability Studies is often viewed as only relevant to those with disabilities. What is forgotten or overlooked is that, at its core, schooling is about defining, locating, measuring, and remediating ability. This essay offers [dis]ableing as a lens for exploring and questioning the ubiquitous ways ability has increasingly become defined and constructed by notions of individualism, competition, and economic productivity. We begin with a description of the key principles borrowed from disability studies in education and apply a [dis]ableing lens to inaugural discussions of Race to the Top federal educational reforms in the United States in order to examine the hidden consequences for all students. This article concludes with new understandings about how educational inequities are perpetuated by the policies and practices that purport to dismantle them.
References
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alternative futures. Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, 32(2), 171-185.
Jacob, E., & Jordan, C. (1987). Moving to dialogue. Anthropology & Education Quarterly,
18(4), 259-261.
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Productive Play. Educational Researcher, 41, 5, 157-162.
Ladd, P. (2005). Deafhood: A concept stressing possibilities, not deficits. Scandinavian Journal
of Public Health, 33, 5, 12-17.
Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. F. (2006). Education research in the public interest: social
justice, action, and policy. New York: Teachers College Press.
Leyva, R. (2009). No Child Left Behind: A Neoliberal Repackaging of Social Darwinism.
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Liasidou, A. (2013). Intersectional understandings of disability and implications for a social
justice reform agenda in education policy and practice. Disability & Society, 28(3), 299-312.
MacNaughton, G. (2003). Shaping early childhood: Learners, curriculum and contexts.
Maidenhead: Open University Press.
McDermott, R., Goldman, S., & Varenne, H. (2006). The cultural work of learning disabilities.
Educational Researcher, 35(6), 12-17.
Morrisson, T. (Ed.)(1992). Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality. New York: Patheon.
Mutua, K., & Swadener, B. B. (2004). Decolonizing research in cross-cultural contexts: critical
personal narratives. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Oakes, J. (1995). Two cities tracking and within-school segregation. Teachers College Record 96(4), p..
Oakes, J., Wells, A., Jones, M., & Datnow, A. (1997). Detracking: The social construction of ability, cultural politics, and resistance to reform. Teachers College Record. 98(3), p. 482-510.
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Penketh, C. (2014). Invention and repair: disability and education after the UK Coalition
Government. Disability & Society, 29(9), 1486-1490.
Ravitch, D. (2013). Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to
America's public schools. Random House LLC.
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Roulstone, A., & Prideaux, S. (2008). More policies, greater inclusion? Exploring the
contradictions of New Labour inclusive education policy. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 18(1), 15-29.
Runswick‐Cole, K. (2011). Time to end the bias towards inclusive education?. British Journal of
Special Education, 38(3), 112-119.
Runswick-Cole, K. (2014). ‘Us’ and ‘them’: the limits and possibilities of a ‘politics of
neurodiversity’in neoliberal times. Disability & society, 29(7), 1117-1129.
Slee, R. (2011). The irregular school: Exclusion, schooling and inclusive education. London:
Routledge.
Söder, M. (2009). Tensions, perspectives and themes in disability studies. Scandinavian Journal
of Disability Research, 11, 2, 67-81.
Solorzano, D. G. & Delgado, B. D. (2001a). Examining transformational resistance through a
critical race and LatCrit theory framework: Chicana and Chicano students in an urban context. Urban Education, 36, 3, 308-342.
Solorzano, D. G. & Yosso, T. J. (2001b). Critical race and LatCrit theory and method: counter-
storytelling. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education: QSE. 14, 471-496.
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New Zealand: University of Otago Press.
Snyder, S. L., Brueggemann, B. J., & Garland-Thomson, R. (2002). Disability studies. New
York: Modern Language Association of America.
Skrtic, T. M. (1995). Disability and democracy: Reconstructing (special) education for
postmodernity. New York: Teachers College Press.
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neoliberal times.” Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 24, 135-141
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Japan, and the United States. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
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Dept. of Education.
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Dept. of Education.
Valle, J. W., & Connor, D. J. (2011). Rethinking disability: A disability studies approach to
inclusive practices. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Varenne, H. & McDermottt, R. (1999). Successful failure: The school America builds. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press.
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Vygotsky, vol. 1. New York: Plenum Press.
Warner, M. (1993). Fear of a queer planet: Queer politics and social theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wills, R., Morton, M., McLean, M., Stephenson, M., & Slee, R. (Eds.). (2014). Tales from
School: Learning Disability and State Education After Administrative Reform. Springer.
Artiles, A. J. (2003). Special education's changing identity: Paradoxes and dilemmas in views of
culture and space. Harvard Educational Review. 73 (2), 164.
Artiles, A. J. (2011). Toward an Interdisciplinary Understanding of Educational Equity and
Difference: The Case of the Racialization of Ability. Educational Researcher, 40, 9, 431-445.
Artiles, A. J., & Trent, S. C. (1994). Overrepresentation of minority students in special education
a continuing debate. The Journal of Special Education, 27(4), 410-437.
Author. (2003).
Authors. (2010a).
Authors. (2010b).
Author. (2011).
Author, (2011a).
Author, (2011b).
Author & Boldt (in press).
Baglieri, S. & Knopf, J. (2004). Normalizing Difference in Inclusive Teaching. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37(6) pp. 525-529.
Baglieri, S., Bejoian, L. M., Broderick, A. A., Connor, D. J., &
Valle, J. (January 01, 2011). [Re]Claiming Inclusive Education toward Cohesion in Educational Reform: Disability Studies Unravels the Myth of the Normal Child. Teachers College Record, 113, 10, 2122-2154.
Balkin, J. M. (1987). Deconstructive practice and legal theory. Yale Law Journal, 743-786.
Barton, L., & Armstrong, F. (Eds.). (2007). Policy, experience and change: cross-cultural
reflections on inclusive education (Vol. 4). Dordrecht: Springer.
Barton, L., & Slee, R. (1999). Competition, selection and inclusive education: some
observations. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 3(1), 3-12.
Bell, D. (1987). And we will not be saved: The elusive quest for racial justice. NewYork: Basic
Books.
Berliner, D. C., & Glass, G. V. (Eds.). (2014). 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America's
Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education. Teachers College Press.
Boldt & Author (2014).
Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (2002). Schooling in capitalist America revisited. Sociology of
education, 1-18.
Brenner, N., & Theodore, N. (2002). Cities and the geographies of “actually existing
neoliberalism”. Antipode, 34(3), 349-379.
Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York:
Routledge.
Campbell, F. K. (2009) Contours of ableism: The production of disability and abledness. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Connor, D., Gabel, S., Gallagher, D., & Morton, M. (2008). Disability studies and inclusive
education - implications for theory, research, and practice. International Journal of
Inclusive Education. 12 (5-6), 5-6.
D'Amato, J. (1987). The belly of the beast: On cultural differences, castelike status, and the
politics of school. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 18(4), 357-360.
Danforth, S. (2009). The incomplete child: An intellectual history of learning disabilities. New
York: Peter Lang
Davies, B. and Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for
the Theory of Social Behavior, 20(1), pp. 43-63.
Dudley-Marling, C., & Baker, D. (2012). The effects of market-based school reforms on students
with disabilities. Disability Studies Quarterly, 32(2).
Dudley-Marling, C., & Gurn, A. (2010). The myth of the normal curve. New York: Peter Lang.
Erevelles, N., & Minear, A. (2010). Unspeakable Offenses: Untangling Race and Disability in
Discourses of Intersectionality. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 4, 2, 127-145.
Erickson, F. (1987). Transformation and school success: The politics and culture of educational
achievement. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 18(4), 335-356.
Ferri, B. (2009) Doing a (dis)Service: Reimagining special education from a disability studies perspective. William Ayers, Therese Quinn, David Stovall (Eds.) Handbook of social justice in education. New York, NY: Routledge.
Ferri, B. & Connor, D. (2005). In the shadow of Brown: Special education and the overrepresentation of students of color. Remedial and Special Education, 26(2), pp. 93-100.
Ferri, B., & Connor, D. (2005). Tools of exclusion: Race, disability, and (re)segregated education. Teachers College Record, 107, pp. 453–474.
Ferri, B.A. & Connor, D.J. (2006). Reading resistance: Discourses of exclusion in desegregation
and inclusion debates. New York: Peter Lang.
Furlong, J. (2013, January). Globalisation, neoliberalism, and the reform of teacher education in
England. In The educational forum (Vol. 77, No. 1, pp. 28-50). Taylor & Francis Group.
Gabel, S. L., & Danforth, S. (Eds.). (2008). Disability & the politics of education: an
international reader. Peter Lang.
Gabel, S. (2005). Disability studies in education. (Ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Goodley, D. (2007). Towards socially just pedagogies: Deleuzoguattarian critical disability
studies. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11(3), 317-334.
Gulson, K. N., & Pedroni, T. C. (2011). Neoliberalism, cities and education in the Global
South/North. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(2), 165-169.
Haraway, D. J. (2004). The Haraway reader. New York, NY: Routledge.
Hursh, D. W., & Henderson, J. A. (2011). Contesting global neoliberalism and creating
alternative futures. Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, 32(2), 171-185.
Jacob, E., & Jordan, C. (1987). Moving to dialogue. Anthropology & Education Quarterly,
18(4), 259-261.
Kaomea, J. (2003). Reading erasures and making the familiar strange: Defamiliarizing methods
for research in formerly colonized and historically oppressed communities. Educational Researcher, 32(2), pp. 14-25.
Koyama, J. P., & Varenne, H. (June 01, 2012). Assembling and Dissembling: Policy as
Productive Play. Educational Researcher, 41, 5, 157-162.
Ladd, P. (2005). Deafhood: A concept stressing possibilities, not deficits. Scandinavian Journal
of Public Health, 33, 5, 12-17.
Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. F. (2006). Education research in the public interest: social
justice, action, and policy. New York: Teachers College Press.
Leyva, R. (2009). No Child Left Behind: A Neoliberal Repackaging of Social Darwinism.
Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 7, 1, 364-381.
Liasidou, A. (2013). Intersectional understandings of disability and implications for a social
justice reform agenda in education policy and practice. Disability & Society, 28(3), 299-312.
MacNaughton, G. (2003). Shaping early childhood: Learners, curriculum and contexts.
Maidenhead: Open University Press.
McDermott, R., Goldman, S., & Varenne, H. (2006). The cultural work of learning disabilities.
Educational Researcher, 35(6), 12-17.
Morrisson, T. (Ed.)(1992). Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality. New York: Patheon.
Mutua, K., & Swadener, B. B. (2004). Decolonizing research in cross-cultural contexts: critical
personal narratives. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Oakes, J. (1995). Two cities tracking and within-school segregation. Teachers College Record 96(4), p..
Oakes, J., Wells, A., Jones, M., & Datnow, A. (1997). Detracking: The social construction of ability, cultural politics, and resistance to reform. Teachers College Record. 98(3), p. 482-510.
Obama, B. (2004). Dreams from my father: A story of race and inheritance.
Penketh, C. (2014). Invention and repair: disability and education after the UK Coalition
Government. Disability & Society, 29(9), 1486-1490.
Ravitch, D. (2013). Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to
America's public schools. Random House LLC.
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Roulstone, A., & Prideaux, S. (2008). More policies, greater inclusion? Exploring the
contradictions of New Labour inclusive education policy. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 18(1), 15-29.
Runswick‐Cole, K. (2011). Time to end the bias towards inclusive education?. British Journal of
Special Education, 38(3), 112-119.
Runswick-Cole, K. (2014). ‘Us’ and ‘them’: the limits and possibilities of a ‘politics of
neurodiversity’in neoliberal times. Disability & society, 29(7), 1117-1129.
Slee, R. (2011). The irregular school: Exclusion, schooling and inclusive education. London:
Routledge.
Söder, M. (2009). Tensions, perspectives and themes in disability studies. Scandinavian Journal
of Disability Research, 11, 2, 67-81.
Solorzano, D. G. & Delgado, B. D. (2001a). Examining transformational resistance through a
critical race and LatCrit theory framework: Chicana and Chicano students in an urban context. Urban Education, 36, 3, 308-342.
Solorzano, D. G. & Yosso, T. J. (2001b). Critical race and LatCrit theory and method: counter-
storytelling. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education: QSE. 14, 471-496.
Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Dunedin,
New Zealand: University of Otago Press.
Snyder, S. L., Brueggemann, B. J., & Garland-Thomson, R. (2002). Disability studies. New
York: Modern Language Association of America.
Skrtic, T. M. (1995). Disability and democracy: Reconstructing (special) education for
postmodernity. New York: Teachers College Press.
Swadener, B.B. (2003). "This is what democracy looks like!": Strengthening advocacy in
neoliberal times.” Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 24, 135-141
Tobin, J. J., Hsueh, Y., Karasawa, M. (2009). Preschool in three cultures revisited: China,
Japan, and the United States. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
United States. (2012). Civil rights data collection. Washington, D.C: Office for Civil Rights, US
Dept. of Education.
United States. (2014). Civil rights data collection. Washington, D.C: Office for Civil Rights, US
Dept. of Education.
Valle, J. W., & Connor, D. J. (2011). Rethinking disability: A disability studies approach to
inclusive practices. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Varenne, H. & McDermottt, R. (1999). Successful failure: The school America builds. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). The collected works of L. S.
Vygotsky, vol. 1. New York: Plenum Press.
Warner, M. (1993). Fear of a queer planet: Queer politics and social theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wills, R., Morton, M., McLean, M., Stephenson, M., & Slee, R. (Eds.). (2014). Tales from
School: Learning Disability and State Education After Administrative Reform. Springer.
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