Beth Ferri

This book purposefully connects practice to research, and vice versa, through the use of deeply personal stories in the form of autoethnographic memoirs. In this collection, twenty contributors share selected tales of teaching students with dis/abilities in K-12 settings across the USA, including tentative triumphs, frustrating failures, and a deep desire to understand the dynamics of teaching and learning.The authors also share an early awareness of significant dissonance between academic knowledge taught to them in teacher education programs and their own experiential knowledge in schools. Coming to question established practices within the field of special education in relation to the children they taught, each author grew increasingly critical of deficit-models of disability that emphasized commonplace practices of physical and social exclusion, dysfunction and disorders, repetitive remediation and punitive punishments. The authors describe how their interactions with children and youth, parents, and administrators, in the context of their classrooms and schools, influenced a shift away from the limiting discourse of special education and toward becoming critical special educators and/or engaging with disability studies as a way to reclaim, reframe, and reimagine disability as a natural part of human diversity. Furthermore, the authors document how these early experiences in the everydayness of schooling helped ground them as teachers and later, teacher educators, who galvanized their research trajectories around studying issues of access and equality throughout educational structures and systems, while developing new theoretical models within Disability Studies in Education, aimed to impact practices and policies.

This groundbreaking volume brings together major figures in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore some of today’s most important issues in education. Scholars examine the achievement/opportunity gaps from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as
the overrepresentation of minority students in special education and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapters
also address school reform and the impact on students based on race, class, and dis/ability and the capacity of law and policy to include (and exclude). Readers will discover how some students are included (and excluded) within schools and society, why some citizens are afforded expanded (or limited) opportunities in life, and who moves up in the world and who is trapped at the “bottom of the well.”

This groundbreaking volume brings together major figures in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore some of today’s most important issues in education. Scholars examine the achievement/opportunity gaps from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as the overrepresentation of minority students in special education and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapters also address school reform and the impact on students based on race, class, and dis/ability and the capacity of law and policy to include (and exclude). Readers will discover how some students are included (and excluded) within schools and society, why some citizens are afforded expanded (or limited) opportunities in life, and who moves up in the world and who is trapped at the “bottom of the well.”

Righting Educational Wrongs brings together the work of scholars from the fields of disability studies in education and law to examine contemporary struggles around inclusion and access to education. Divided into three parts, the volume explores the intersections between disability studies, law, and education in part one. Contributors in this section forge a theoretical framework for thinking about educational access. Part two takes a critical look at some of the histories of exclusion in education and ways that these exclusions have been upheld by a variety of educational policies and practices. Part three reflects on the ways that the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act is experienced by students with disabilities and their families.