Valentina Migliarini

At a time of global neoliberal reforms and rampant austerity measures, education has become a commodity. Within this context of education as a right for the privileged, racial disparities in disciplne and achievement have been normalized and accepted as natural at the expense of multiply-marginalized students of color, those at the intersection of multiple oppressions. Consequently, educators feel increasingly powerless and unequipped to reduce such systemic inequities. This chapter refutes the assumption of disparities along the lines of race, disability, and intersectional identity as unavoidable, by advancing a Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) approach to classroom and behavior management for educators. Strategies for behavioral management have been traditionally derived from an individualistic, psychological orientation. As a result, behavioral management has been conceptualized as correcting and preventing disruption caused by the 'difficult' students and about reinforcing positive comportment of the ‘good’ ones. DisCrit shifts the questions that are asked from “How can we fix students who disobey rules?” to “How can pre-service teacher education and existing behavioral management courses be transformed so that they are not steeped in color-evasion and silent on interlocking systems of oppression?”. DisCrit provides an opportunity to (re)organize classrooms, moving away from "fixing" the individual–be it the student or the teacher–and shifting toward justice. When teachers understand 1) ways students are systemically oppressed; 2) how oppressions are (re)produced in classrooms; and 3) what they can do to resist those oppressions in terms of pedagogy, curriculum, and relationships, they can build solidarity and resistance with students and communities. DisCrit has the potential to prepare future teachers to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interactions, active engagement in learning focused on creating solidarity in the classroom instead of managing. This results in curriculum, pedagogy, and relationships that are rooted in expansive notions of justice. The chapter illustrates how DisCrit, as an intersectional and interdisciplinary framework, can enrich existing pre-service teachers’ beliefs about relationships in the classroom and connect these relationships to larger projects of dismantling inequities faced by multiply-marginalized students. Consequently we are writing about DisCrit Solidarity as theory informed practice, or praxis.

Disability Studies e inclusione è un volume collettaneo che
dà voce al dibattito intorno alla disabilità che si sta sviluppando in ambito non solo accademico e di ricerca, ma sociale, culturale e biopolitico. Gli autori discutono criticamente i presupposti e i paradigmi che generano le interpretazioni di disabilità, deficit, normalità, patologia, abilismo, nonché le politiche e le pratiche sociali e educative che ne conseguono. Nella prima parte, i contributi analizzano i rapporti tra inclusione, da un lato, e abilismo, razzismo e rappresentazione del potere dall’altro; nella seconda, destrutturano il linguaggio attraverso il quale si ordinano e si praticano i dispositivi sociali tendenti a conformare tutto ciò che diverge; nella terza, si soffermano in particolare sull’inclusione scolastica,
descrivendo quali pratiche efficaci possono essere implementate e quali, al contrario, producono discriminazioni e marginalizzazioni.

Black girls' experiences with sexual harassment in schools remain critically understudied. To mediate this void, this study explored the role of educators and school policy as disrupting or perpetuating racialized sexual harassment toward them. Using a disability critical race theory (DisCrit) framework, we argue educator response and education policy create a nexus of subjugation that makes Black girls increasingly vulnerable to experience racialized sexual harassment at the hands of adults and peers, while largely failing to provide protection from or recourse for such harassment.

The authors present a qualitative study which investigates the intersections
between English Language Learner (ELL) status, disability, and special
education in a mid-sized urban school district in Upstate New York.
They explore how teachers conceptualize and implement New York
State Education Department policies which affect the inclusive education
of ELL students. The authors discuss how the discourse used in
these policies, along with teachers’ limited access to guidance and support,
could lead to the exacerbation of educational inequities and exclusion
of ELLs, despite the promise to support inclusion and success for
all students. The Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) framework is
used as an intersectional tool to help re-frame existing inclusive policies
and practices.

Strategies for behavioral management have been traditionally derived from an individualistic, psychological orientation. As such, behavioral management is about correcting and preventing disruption caused by the “difficult” students and about reinforcing positive comportment of the “good” ones. However, increased classroom diversity and inclusive and multicultural education reform efforts, in the United States and in most Western societies, warrant attention to the ways preservice teachers develop beliefs and attitudes toward behavior management that (re)produce systemic inequities along lines of race, disability, and intersecting identities. Early-21st-century legislation requiring free and equitable education in the least restrictive environment mandates that school professionals serve the needs of all students, especially those located at the interstices of multiple differences in inclusive settings. These combined commitments create tensions in teacher education, demanding that educators rethink relationships with students so that they are not simply recreating the trends of mass incarceration within schools. Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) shifts the questions that are asked from “How can we fix students who disobey rules?” to “How can preservice teacher education and existing behavioral management courses be transformed so that they are not steeped in color evasion and silent on interlocking systems of oppression?”
DisCrit provides an opportunity to (re)organize classrooms, moving away from “fixing” the individual—be it the student or the teacher—and shifting toward justice. As such, it is important to pay attention not only to the characteristics, dispositions, attitudes, and students’ and teachers’ behaviors but also to the structural features of the situation in which they operate. By cultivating relationships rooted in solidarity, in which teachers understand the ways students are systemically oppressed, how those oppressions are (re)produced in classrooms, and what they can do to resist those oppressions in terms of pedagogy, curriculum, and relationship, repositions students and families are regarded as valuable members. Consequently, DisCrit has the potential to prepare future teachers to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interactions and active engagement in learning focused on creating solidarity in the classroom instead of managing. This results in curriculum, pedagogy, and relationships that are rooted in expansive notions of justice. DisCrit can help preservice teachers in addressing issues of diversity in the curriculum and in contemplating how discipline may be used as a tool of punishment, and of exclusion, or as a tool for learning. Ultimately, DisCrit as an intersectional and interdisciplinary framework can enrich existing preservice teachers’ beliefs about relationships in the classroom and connect these relationships to larger projects of dismantling inequities faced by multiply marginalized students.

This paper emphasizes the aporetic nature of the Salamanca
Statement on Special Needs Education (UNESCO, 1994), adopting a
cross-cultural perspective. It draws on an intersectional perspective
on inclusion (Connor, Ferri & Annamma, 2016; Artiles & Kozleski,
2016; Erevelles, 2014) to argue that although inclusion has been
defined by such an international declaration as a transformative
project to ensure access to quality education for all students,
national inclusive policies are still focused on a pathological
construction of student difference, slowly incorporating children
from different linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. The focus on Italy
and the United States is a response to examine the discourses and
practices of inclusion in two countries that have been impacted by
the Salamanca Statement thinking. To substantiate our argument
concerned with the limitations embedded in the Salamanca
Statement, data from two empirical studies conducted in Rome and
in Upstate New York will be presented. The studies show how
inclusion leads to overrepresentation of migrant students in Special
Educational Needs. We conclude that the Salamanca Statement has
been transferred into a tool to strengthen normality against
difference, and that it should focus on interrupting micro-exclusions
for groups sitting at the intersections of race, ability and other
identity markers.