Decoding the Politics of Power on Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners With Disabilities in Korea

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 1:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Power, Politics, and Paradigms: Examining Disability Knowledge in Educational Contexts (Table 10)

Abstract

This instrumental case study employs Korean national multicultural education policy documents published from 2006 to 2023 as instruments in unpacking how policy documents are used to (re)produce and perpetuate social inequalities towards culturally and linguistically diverse students with/without disabilities and their families. By encoding dis/abled identities and Koreaneness towards CLD students, these students are described as embodying deficits innately part of their ontology in the policy discourses. As a result, the diverse cultural and linguistic assets they bring to schools are often invalidated, reinforcing this “ideology-ontology circuit” (Artiles, 2022, p. 136) and operating as a mechanism for stratification and exclusion in the Korean education system.

Authors

• Yehyang Lee, Syracuse University

• Dosun Ko, Santa Clara University

• Byul Yim, Office of the State Superintendent of Education