Constraints, Tensions, Ambiguities, and Ignorance: In Search of Frameworks for Exploration and Liberation

• In Event: Boundary Brokers at the Intersections of Disability Studies in Education and Special Education: Toward a More Radical Conceptualization and Enactment of Inclusive Education

Abstract

Conscious of the cloak that veils my scholarship, I am in a continual process of reexamining what I think that I know, searching for new frameworks that help to expand how I understand and address the complexities of an equity agenda for students who are minoritized in our social institutions, particularly within our educational practices. Current conceptualizations of Disability Studies in Education, Special Education, and Critical Disability Studies in Education each lack some of the theoretical tools that we need to understand and collaborate on the equity agenda. In this discussion, I focus on emerging theoretical tools that offer promise for deepening understanding and strengthening action. I hope the discussion helps to answer some of the questions that each of the panelists have been asked: (1) What are the tensions you face in your work at the boundaries of DSE and special education? (2) How do you negotiate your academic identity between the fields? (3) What might be the most productive contradictions to resolve? (3) Which methodological and theoretical tools, as well as area of research foci can be leveraged to contribute to a more radical enactment of inclusive education?

One challenge that educators face is the absence of discourse on how culture permeates learning and human development (Rogoff, 2003). Curriculum and the graded organization of schools produce institutionalized marginalization because we lack collective understanding of how cultural histories and experiences shape approaches to learning and knowledge building (Cole, 2005). This decultured view of learning limits opportunities to learn for groups of students who lack tools to uncover the tacit or hidden assumptions built into the culture of schooling. Communities of practice in classrooms, schools, school districts, and state education agencies are saturated with these assumptions in their daily activities. A number of markers of difference intersect within individual experience such as dis/ability, race, gender, ethnicity, and language, enacting particular kinds of injustices for students because of the institutionalized racialized and minoritized practices that exist within schools and the communities they serve.
Intersectionality and contrapuntal analysis (Artiles, 2013) offer important theoretical and analytic lenses. But they are under-theorized in special education, DSE or DisCrit (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2012). As a result, I am finding ways to write about and work with other scholars who are investigating and expanding their ability to use these tools.

In a new study, funded by the IES, I will be collecting a year’s worth of qualitative data from teachers and students with significant support needs who negotiate learning to read in classrooms with peers who are not defined by disability labels. The research team will explore the use of intersectional analysis to look at how identity markers conspire to position and superimpose particular kinds of practice and discourses on teachers and students in classrooms. We are working now on our analytic tools and I will be able to report on our progress in the development of these tools as well as the tensions that arise as we try to create these lenses.
 

Author

• Elizabeth B. Kozleski, The University of Kansas