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Siloed Responsibilities: English Language Learner Teachers and Special Educators Consider the Intersections of Language and Dis/ability

Sun, April 19, 2:15 to 4:15pm, Virtual Room

Abstract

Public education in the United States has consistently and persistently failed significant numbers of Emergent Bilinguals Labeled as Disabled (EBLADs). DisCrit and Raciolinguistics provide theoretical lenses for the examination of how systemic racism, ableism and linguicism impact teachers charged with serving EBLADs. In this study, we explored how existing educational structures siloed the responsibility, expertise, referral and identification processes for EBLADs and rendered them vulnerable to misidentification and mistreatment. Key findings revealed that inequitable school structures confined teachers’ abilities to serve EBLAD students, teachers entered a liminal space in which they snapped back into siloed thinking about classification, questioned concepts of institutional systems, dis/ability and language, or demonstrated readiness to consider and respond to intersectional identities.

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