Sustaining Special Education Teachers of Color: An Autoethnographic Educational Case for Developing Administrators’ Intersectional Competence

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Interrogating the Lives of Teachers Across Contexts: Organizational Commitments and Cross-Case Analyses (Table 3)

Abstract

The authors examine how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) approaches racial disparities in special education. By emphasizing the need to increase the minoritized teaching workforce and supporting personnel preparation, the act aims to disrupt racial inequity in special education. However, the authors argue that recruiting and sustaining racialized teachers is more complex than simply focusing on their racialized identities. Using autoethnographic writings by a Latina special education teacher, we prepare an educational case to build administrators’ development of intersectional competence. Intersectional competence refers to educators’ preparedness to recognize how schooling is implicated in multiple, intersecting systems of oppression, collaborate with relevant stakeholders who themselves navigate multiple social marginalizations, and consider sociocultural differences while making instructional decisions.

Authors

• Martha Lorena Hernández Flores, Florida International University

• Mildred Boveda, Pennsylvania State University