What's Marx Got to Do With the Racialization of Disability?

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Race and Human Rights in Contemporary Education

Abstract

The aim of this paper is threefold: First, grounded in historical materialism and Vygotskian
cultural-historical activity theory and informed by interdisciplinary literature from special
education, disability studies, organization studies, and critical geography, the paper will provide
a new conceptualization of disproportionality. Second, we will present a cultural-historical
activity theory (CHAT)-based systemic intervention methodology called formative intervention
for re-mediating the exclusionary educational processes in practice. Finally, a statewide
implementation of formative intervention methodology, called Learning Lab, will be presented
to discuss the challenges and possibilities of facilitating a socially just, ecologically valid, and
sustainable transformation in local school systems to address disproportionality.

Author

• Aydin Bal, University of Wisconsin - Madison