Raciolinguistic Disability Studies: Teacher Representations of Race, Language, and Dis/ability

• In Event: Intersections of Race and Language

Abstract

The ideologies that educators use to frame their understanding of students classified as English learners also work alongside the ideologies that inform their understandings of students diagnosed as disabled. Surfacing and analyzing understandings of the discursive and material intersection affords us an opportunity to make meaning of practices and policies that are advanced, sustained and challenged by educators at schools sites and in classrooms. I engaged in full-day observations over the course of a week at a middle school site and conducted open-ended and conversational interviews with seven educators. Efforts to improve the educational experience of students at this intersection should include opportunities for explicit conversations on the categories we use and their crystallization throughout our country’s colonial legacy.

Author

• Ivan Rosales Montes, Alder Graduate School of Education