The De-Professionalization of Paraprofessional Labor in Special Education: Intersectional Analyses of Racist/Ableist Segregation and the Epistemic Labor of Disability

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Intersections: Examining Race, Class, and Disability in Educational Discourse (Table 10)

Abstract

This paper analyzes historical and contemporary special education research on paraprofessionals to understand the consequences of racially segregated labor in special education. We argue here that disability as an epistemic category of difference is appropriated by (special) educational institutions to shore up racialized, queer, and gender subjectivities of disabled students, general education teachers, and paraprofessionals in special education. Reifying the stratification and subjugation of low-income people of color through the deployment of ableist logics, special education remains a site of racial subjugation that demands transformative practices of “research, remedy, and repair” to liberate disabled students and the paraprofessionals who do the much needed care work in these contexts.

Authors

• Ashley Zhou, University of California - Berkeley

• Nirmala Erevelles, University of Alabama