Discipline Disability Is Not Individual: Looking Closely at How a Smart Kid Is Being Disabled

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 4:20 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Impacts of School Discipline and Policing (Table 6)

Abstract

As with learning, we always celebrate or disparage students' discipline (dis)ability, frequently judged as an individual property and labeled as a fixed trait. However, by looking closely at the process of being disabled, we argue that discipline disability is cultural work organized within a specific context and complex interactions. And it is better described as a culture that stops at classification and aims to cause harm, rather than a fact about a specific child. Moreover, we highlight how discipline disability intersects with learning, suggesting that classroom discipline should not come at the expense of students' learning. Consequently, we emphasize that once there is a decontextualized, individual notion of ability, there will inevitably be a DiSmart characterized by discipline disability.

Authors

• Haoxuan Yang, East China Normal University

• Sihan Xiao, East China Normal University