The Consequences of a Medicalized Response to Disproportionality Research: Reexamining How Disproportionality Is Taken Up

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Ten
  In Roundtable Session: Using Disability Studies and Social Justice Perspectives to Explore Ability in Schools (Table 16)

Abstract

This conceptual paper utilizes DisCrit and the Theory Adaptation model to critically examine the consequential role that disproportionality research plays in the field of special education. Although disproportionality research exposes a significant form of systemic oppression, this line of scholarship is taken up in ways that uphold racism and ableism for children of color. The response across policy, practice, and research promotes a medicalized approach to special education identification that pathologizes children of color. A hyperfocus on disproportionality has thus caused harm, and the problem of disproportionality has not actually gone away. I call on researchers to reconsider their response to racial disproportionality in order to advance true justice for children of color in special education.

Author

• Soyoung Park, Bank Street College of Education
  Presenting Author