How Does EI/ECSE (Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education) Imagine Young Children Labeled as Disabled? A Systematic Examination

• In Event: How Do Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education Conceal Inequity? A Systematic Examination

Abstract

Presentation Summary (497/500 words)
Objectives
This study examines the dominating narratives of young children with disabilities in the EI/ECSE field’s leading peer-reviewed journals. This multi-stage review aims to show how children are described, how their disability labels are portrayed, and how power operates within EI/ECSE research.

Methods
We are conducting a multi-stage review, including a scoping review (Peters et al., 2022) and a thematic content analysis (Bowen, 2009) of articles published in the three leading EI/ECSE journals: Journal of Early Intervention (JEI), Topics in Early Childhood Special Education (TECSE), and Infants and Young Children (IYC) since 2015. We utilized Disability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit; Annamma et al., 2013) to interrogate the dominant narratives about disabled children in the research and the evidence-based interventions published in leading EI/ECSE peer-reviewed journals.

Data sources
We worked with a university librarian to search through all papers published in JEI, TECSE, or IYC from 2015. This resulted in a pool of 582 deduplicated papers. Our inclusion criteria were: (a) empirical, original research paper, (b) children were primary participants of the study, and (c) It was conducted in the United States. We screened all 582 papers by independently having two coders read the abstract. We are currently conducting a full-text analysis of 242 papers.

Results
The EI/ECSE is steeped in deficit-based understandings of disability (Ferri & Bacon, 2011) with its research and recommended practices often retaining racialized and ableist notions for understanding human development, learning, and inclusion (Blanchard et al., 2021; Love & Beneke, 2021). This deficit-based understanding shapes what is researched, published, and recommended to its practitioners and scholars. Our review seeks to contest dominant deficit-based narratives about young children labeled as disabled or ‘at risk’. While we anticipate completing the final analysis by the end of August 2023, preliminary findings have revealed concerning patterns that our field must recognize, and resolve to end, in order to advance justice for young children with disabilities. For example, many papers center on a deficit-based view of children, using descriptors such as ‘low income,’ ‘at risk,’ or ‘vulnerable.’ We have found that often, instead of acknowledging systemic inequities, EI/ECSE research focuses on problematizing at the individual level, with a purpose or goal of ‘fixing’ individual children. Dominant areas deemed problematic or needing intervention include numeracy/mathematical skills, behavior, and language, with a continued focus on the ‘word gap.’ In line with the theme of the 2024 AERA conference, we will urge scholars to consider the results of this review in how we might dismantle the racist, ableist, and injust scholarship that has dominated to construct new norms that center the beauty, brilliance, and dignity of all young children.

Scientific or scholarly significance
It is critically important to examine the problematic practices promoted and published in the EI/ECSE field about young children labeled as disabled, and naming how those in power in our field reproduce and maintain systemic inequality, is needed in order to shift towards equitable, inclusive, and just practices and scholarship (Aydarova, 2019).

Authors

• Ruby Batz, University of Nevada - Reno

• Courtney O'Grady, University of Alabama

• Megan Vihn, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill