Beth A. Ferri

Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability

In this article, we combine aspects of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Disability Studies (DS) to propose a new theoretical framework that incorporates a dual analysis of race and ability: Dis/ability Critical Race Studies, or DisCrit. We first examine some connections between the interdependent constructions of race and dis/ability in education and society in the United States and why we find it necessary to add another branch to Critical Race Theory and Disability Studies. Next, we outline the tenets of DisCrit, calling attention to its potential value as well as elucidate some tensions, cautions, and current limitations within DisCrit. Finally, we suggest ways in which DisCrit can be used in relation to moving beyond the contemporary impasse of researching race and dis/ability within education and other fields.

The conflict within: resistance to inclusion and other paradoxes in special education

In the 30 years since the passage of the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (PL. 94–142) in 1975 (subsequently the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) special education in the USA as an institutionalized practice has become solidified. Over the years, however, the practice of segregating students because of disability has come under increased scrutiny. Beginning in the late 1980s, an increasing number of parents advocated that their children with disabilities be put in mainstream general education classes. Emotionally charged debates over the inclusion of students with disabilities in general education classrooms ensued. In this paper we look at the public debates over inclusion and expose some of the paradoxes within special education that serve to hinder the integration of individuals with disabilities into general classes and, by extension, society at large.

In the Shadow of Brown Special Education and Overrepresentation of Students of Color

In this first decade of the 21st century, we mark two milestones in education history: the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 2004, and the 30th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ( IDEA) in 2005. Both Brown and IDEA asserted the need for increased educational opportunities for once excluded groups of students and asserted that segregation was inherently harmful and unequal. However, although we might wish to celebrate, there is also a need to critically examine the unfulfilled promise of both these efforts toward integrated education. In this article, we focus on one of the most long-standing critiques of special education practice: the disproportionate placement of students of color in special education programs, referred to in the education literature as overrepresentation. We then trace some of the origins of the current problem of overrepresentation by tracing the tangled relationship of special education and resegregation in the first years following the Brown decision.

Women with disabilities: Missing voices

Abstract This paper analyses how disability informs and complicates gender identity for women with disabilities and demonstrates that disability is a feminist issue. The first section underscores the dual silence of women with disabilities who remain largely unheard of, both in feminist literature and in the disability rights movement. The status of women with disabilities in the United States reflects their position as an oppressed group in terms of educational opportunity, rehabilitation and vocational program access, occupational attainment, economic status, and social outlets. The second section of this paper suggests possible points of entry into several debates within feminist literature that would be broadened or transformed by a disability perspective. Issues of reproductive rights, control of women’s bodies, newborn’s right to treatment, the construction of gender as informed by disability, and sexual representations are among the issues analyzed. Finally, the last section of this paper analyzes various strategies for change, including standpoint or minority models and strategies within feminist thought that may be useful or emancipatory for women with disabilities.

Teachers with LD Ongoing Negotiations with Discourses of Disability

The purpose of this study is to examine how 4 teachers with learning disabilities (LD) negotiate multiple, complex, and sometimes contradictory discourses of disabilities in constructing their own understandings of LD. We chose to study teachers with LD because of their unique access to at least 3 different sources of knowledge about LD: (a) professional discourses on disability, (b) mainstream cultural messages about LD, and (c) insights gained from their own life experience. We drew on aspects of critical discourse analysis and narrative inquiry for this investigation. Our findings indicate that participants draw on these discourses and on their teaching experience in various and complex ways to construct meaning about LD. In some instances, participants use the dominant discourses; at other times, they work to subvert these meanings. Yet, paradoxically, whether speaking with or against these meanings, their voices are inescapably engaging with authoritative discourses and cultural scripts surrounding disability.

I Was the Special Ed. Girl: Urban Working-Class Young Women of Colour.

Recent criticism of the over‐representation of minority students in special education do not adequately account for gender, despite the fact that urban special education classrooms in the USA are largely populated by young men of colour. In fact, we know very little about how being female shapes the experiences and understandings of young women of colour labelled disabled in schools. Using an interdisciplinary framework informed by Black feminist studies, disability studies, and class studies, we analyse autobiographical portraits of five young women of colour who received special education services. Focusing on their perspectives of life in and out of school, we examine how they understand and negotiate multiple subject positions and actively and creatively work to resist these constraints.

Undermining inclusion? A critical reading of response to intervention (RTI)

In this paper, I critically examine the discourse surrounding response to intervention (RTI), a US-based education reform that has garnered a considerable amount of attention (as well as controversy) in a very short amount of time. A multi-pronged reform effort, RTI is a tiered approach to delivering instructional intervention to students at risk, an on-going and systematic model of monitoring student performance, as well as an alternative to the ability/achievement discrepancy model for identifying learning disabilities. In this paper, I argue, however, that RTI is not so much a reform but a tactic, aimed at returning to the status quo of segregated special education and reinvigorating many of the foundational assumptions of traditional special education practice.

Fixated on Ability

This essay examines the ubiquitous use of ableist metaphors in contemporary feminist discourses and outlines two particular ways in which feminist theorists use disability to locate objects of remediation: first, the construction of disability in opposition to knowledge and second, the use of disability to highlight the subtle workings of power and privilege. In addition, we critique ableist notions of mobility and movement, which are used to define and imagine liberation, resistance, and transformation. Because many rhetorical uses of disability reinscribe normative and exclusionary paradigms within otherwise libratory feminist theories, we assert the need for new metaphors and frames of reference to more adequately theorize multiplicity and to more fully realize social transformation. Transforming the ways we use language in order to more fully realize its paradoxes and playfulness will, we argue, yield more intersectional analyses and more fruitful political coalitions.

Interrupting the Discourse A Response to Reid and Valle

Reid and Valle (in this issue) illustrate how discourse within the field of learning disabilities (LD) determines what can and cannot be said and shapes what counts as knowledge or truth. Because basic assumptions about disability often remain unquestioned, Reid and Valle ask us to focus on the epistemological foundations of the field of LD. They demonstrate how discourse, far from being simply an academic or abstract theoretical pursuit, has direct material consequences for people labeled as having LD. In this response, I highlight some of the ways that the discourse in the LD field is getting in the way of truly transforming education for all learners and impeding our ability to ask the hard questions about our own complicity in issues such as the overrepresentation of students of color and the inaccessibility of general education learning environments.

Definitions and Eligibility Criteria Applied to the Adolescent and Adult Population with Learning Disabilities across Agencies

The purpose of this study was to investigate the similarities and differences across state agencies serving adolescents and adults with learning disabilities in relation to their definitions and eligibility criteria for services. Significant differences were noted within and across agencies. Specific emphasis was given to investigating the 51 state departments of special education (SPE) and vocational rehabilitation (VR), including Washington, DC. A conceptual framework consisting of 21 components was used in analyzing the definitions and criteria. A follow-up phone interview was conducted with 14 state departments of SPE and VR to provide additional input on current trends that might not have been reflected in the empirical data. An outcome of those findings resulted in suggestions for definitions and eligibility criteria policy across state agencies.