Disability Justice in (Special) Education Futures: Exploring Critical, Intersectional, and Social and Emotional Dimensions

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

The scholars on this panel illuminate how remembering the legacies of deficit ideologies, medicalization, and intersectional marginalization can inform the reconstruction of just futures in special education. It offers an interdisciplinary dialogue and covers current debates around access, inclusion, intersectionality, and social transformation. By applying a disability justice lens to bridge education, bilingual/disability studies, and the examination of social emotional learning, these strands of work contribute to a broader discussion about how education research can engage with ableist pasts, respond to current challenges, and help shape more inclusive educational futures. Through this focus on intersectionality and disability, this session offers new insights and practical tools for researchers, educators, and policymakers working toward intersectional equity and inclusion for students with disabilities.

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chair

• Patrick Camangian, University of San Francisco

Papers

• Advancing the Social and Emotional Inclusion of Students with Disabilities: From Discourse to Measurement and Practices - Christina Cipriano, Yale University; Michael McCarthy, Yale Child Study Center

• Re-Framing the Master Narratives of Learning Dis/Abilities through an Emotion and Intersectional Lens - David I. Hernandez-Saca, University of Northern Iowa

• Learning for Dis/abled Bilingual Latina/o/x Youth: Expanding to the Consequential for Transformative Futures - Taucia Gonzalez, University of Arizona; Joan J. Hong, University of Maryland; Mariana Pacheco, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Kate Roberts, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Na Lor, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Intersectional Consciousness: Transnational Lessons on Disability Justice - Mildred Boveda, Pennsylvania State University

Discussant

• Kaleb Germinaro, University of Illinois at Chicago