Critical Historiography of Special Education Research and Praxis: Advancing Collective Race and Dis/Ability Positionings

• In Event: Anti-Racist Critical Perspectives Diversifying Special Education Research: Challenging Traditional Narratives of Objectivity, Neutrality, and Science

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes

Research about teacher education for students receiving specialized education services is often presented in ahistorical and decontextualized ways, obscuring the significance of positionality in shaping knowledge production and practice. In contrast, we foreground understanding positionality through historical, theoretical, and contextual lenses. Enacting critical historiography, we trace how coloniality, racism, ableism, eugenics, and civil rights advocacy have shaped the field of special education and the ways educators are prepared. We offer an interdisciplinary and intersectional framework urging scholars and educators to engage with their location in systems of power. We ask: how can teacher educators and university faculty facilitate understandings of positionality from a critical historical lens and in relation to the intersections of racism and ableism?

Perspective

We apply critical historiography (Bohrer, 2018) as a methodological approach to examine how positionality, power, and historical context intersect to shape research and practice. We also integrate interdisciplinary and intersectional lenses such as those applied in Disability Studies in Education and DisCrit (Annamma et al., 2013; Connor & Valle, 2024). Critical historiography resists linear, Eurocentric narratives of progress, instead interrogating the production of knowledge by tracing the historical conditions, power relations, and epistemological frameworks that structure fields of studies (Apple, 2004) —in this case, special education. We rely upon three principles: (1) Contextualizing knowledge production, (2) Engaging positionality and reflexivity, and (3) Interrogating progress narratives.

Methods and Data Sources

Using critical historiography (Bohrer, 2018), we make clear how history informs the present and shapes educator positionalities and future possibilities to enter an intersectional dis/Ability and race discursive, material, and emotive prolepsis (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003). Prolepsis, in this context, refers to the anticipatory enactment of possible futures within present discourses and practices, shaping how knowledge is constructed and contested within special education.

Our analysis is conceptual, involving a review of the literature and secondary sources, including legislative documents, policy reports, and scholarly literature on the history of special education and models of dis/Abilities along race. We draw on our own oral histories and teacher narratives (e.g., Author 1, 2024; Locke et al., 2022), as well as other writings centering dis/Abled individuals and communities of color. These works amplify historically marginalized voices in special education research (Kulkarni, 2022).

Results

Using a critical historiographic lens, we examine the social movements and historical events that shaped models of dis/Abilities and special education services, highlighting dis/Ability’s entanglements with race. These insights are crucial for both university faculty and practitioners, as they help transcend historical boundaries that have resulted in the undertheorizing of race and dis/Ability in special education (e.g., Artiles et al., 2016; See Appendix A).

Scholarly significance

In response to the AERA theme, Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Education Research, we assert that dismantling racialized ableism in special education requires urgent, critical reflection on our positionalities—this work is not peripheral but essential to forging more just and inclusive educational futures.

Authors

• Mildred Boveda, Pennsylvania State University

• David I. Hernandez-Saca, University of Northern Iowa

• Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides, Hunter College - CUNY