Who “Owns” Dis/ability? The Cultural Work of Critical Special Educators as Insider Outsiders

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Teaching Diversity in Higher Education

Abstract

In this paper, I describe the work of critical special education scholars who challenge the fundamental assumptions on which special education is founded—and illustrate the implications for all educators. First, I acknowledge special education as a complex, multi-faceted, multi-layered, established institution. Second, I describe its medicalized knowledge base that gives rise to specific, limited discourses of what constitutes a dis/ability. Third, I discuss alternative sociocultural knowledge bases informed by Disability Studies put forth by critical special educators to engage their peers in broadening ways to understand dis/ability. Fourth, in contrasting these theoretical groundings, I discuss implications for teacher dispositions toward differences among students and the cultural work of reshaping social education to exemplify a more equitable and accessible world.

Author

• David J. Connor, Hunter College - CUNY