Teaching Intersectional Disabled Youth: Questioning Traditional Best Practices and Student Success

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 12:40 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Reimagining Special Education: Integrating Equity and Community Knowledge (Table 4)

Abstract

In the US, success and best practices in education and, specifically in special education, have been constructed through a dominant, westernized epistemology that has and continues to privilege white, English-speaking, able-bodied individuals. We, two non-disabled Latina teacher preparation scholar-practitioners, trouble “success” and “best practices” for intersectional disabled youth (IDY) through a critical and synthesizing review of the research. Using an inductive and deductive approach to data analysis, findings suggest that traditional understandings of student success and best practices focus on where the disabled student is positioned in relation to their peers and more critical understandings center on who the disabled student is and ways to support and advocate for them. Implications for practice based on new definitions are presented.

Authors

• Cristina C. Santamaria Graff, Indiana University - Indianapolis

• Allison Segarra Hansen, Indiana University - Indianapolis