Researching Research on Overrepresentation in Special Education

• In Event: Disrupting Disproportionality: Implications of Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) for Teaching Toward Equity

Abstract

Purpose
This paper provides an overview of approaches to researching overrepresentation in special education (traditionalist approaches, reconceptualist approaches, and those informed by DisCrit) and an emerging analytic framework based on intersectionality as an analytic tool.

Perspective and Materials
We first consider the need for the shift from traditionalist approaches that are limited by purely quantitative considerations of the historical legacy of disproportionality in special education (Andrews et al., 2000; Gallagher, 1998, 2006; Kauffman & Bader, 2018). Traditionalists maintain the “science” of disability (Kauffman et al. 2018) and by resisting engagement with issues of whiteness, ableism, and racism, and eschewing sustained engagement with the social construct of disability, traditionalist research has been ill equipped to decrease overrepresentation. We provide recent national IDEA compliance data for consideration of reporting on disproportionality as an example of the limitations of the traditionalist solely quantitative approach (Cavendish, Artiles, & Harry, 2014). The data sources include three years of each of the 50 state’s IDEA Part B Annual Performance Reports submitted to the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs for the years 2013 - 2016.

We then synthesize reconceptualist perspectives that highlight research as a cultural act (Arzubiaga et al., 2008; Bal & Trainor, 2016; Kozleski et al., 2014; Nasir & Hand, 2006) and suggest a significant reframing of the research around overrepresentation that acknowledges the social and historical origins of overrepresentation as related to the historical legacy of racism in the US. Specifically, we challenge the assumptions that 1) Research is scientific and objective and 2) Race is a singular construct that can be decontextualized and studied as a covariate or factor, and suggest tenets of DisCrit that provide counter perspectives to these assumptions and an intersectional view of race and dis/ability.

Finally, we introduce an intersectionality-based analytic (IBA) framework that builds on reconceptualist and DisCrit scholarship as an alternative to traditionalist research approaches. Drawing from Collins and Bilge’s (2016) core components (relationality, power, and social inequality) we advocate for the notions of power and privilege as central to an understanding of intersectionality as an analytic lens and distinct from work that simply includes two or more identity markers and claims to be intersectional. We also argue for a broader application of intersectionality to include the crossing of methodological (qualitative/quantitative), systemic (micro/macro), and positional (teacher, researcher, policymaker) barriers embedded within structures of power and privilege. We share the guiding questions within the IBA framework for use as researchers challenge reproduction of inequities and power differentials within research and policymaking processes.

Significance
The use of IBA requires critical reflection of issues of power, identity, and positionality in research, policy analysis, and practice. Thus, the potential of an equity-based intersectionality framework is that it facilitates the recognition and examination of interactions in many domains (hegemonic, structural, interpersonal, individual) that allows for a comprehensive view of research and policy impact (Hancock, 2007).

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Authors

• Wendy Cavendish, University of Miami

• Jennifer F. Samson, Hunter College - CUNY