Disability and the Meaning of Social Justice in Teacher Education Research: A Precarious Guest at the Table?

Abstract

Although disability is assumed to be part of the teacher education social justice landscape, its position in the context of social justice is contested and has not been informed by an analysis of the empirical record. To address this gap, we examined 25 years of research on social justice in teacher education, focusing on how disability is presented in relationship to other social markers of identity. Disability is only modestly visible within this literature; when included, it is typically treated as an isolated marker of identity, absent considerations of intersectionality. Overcoming this marginalization of disability requires new, robust cross-faculty alliances in conceptualizing research on social justice in teacher education; adopting discursive practices that complicate disability in terms of its intersectional, reciprocal relationship with the full range of social markers of identity; and intersectionality-driven instruction connecting multiple identities and the multiple instructional strategies required to transform teacher education for social justice.

Keywords

disability diversity equity inclusion intersectionality preservice teacher education social justice

Preparing teachers for social justice has long been a driving force within teacher education, reflecting a commitment to educating students from multiple social identity groups who are marginalized and oppressed in schools. Given any particular decade, specific social identity markers may take center stage in this work—with new markers gaining visibility as previously neglected identity groups begin to receive vital, much needed attention.

Alongside social justice concerns for equity regarding race, class, ethnicity, gender, language, socioeconomic status and, more recently, sexual orientation and religion, stands the question of disability. As part of the overall vision for social justice, disability is generally viewed as a key social marker of identity. Yet students with disabilities continue to be marginalized and have persistently lower academic outcomes, such as graduation rates, compared to their mainstream peers (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). The connection between social justice and disability was amplified with the emergence of the disability studies in education (DSE) movement in the 1990s, which views disability as a socially constructed phenomenon, shifting its historical definition away from an immutable individual characteristic (Baglieri et al., 2011). Furthermore, the inclusion of students with disabilities itself has long been viewed as a social justice issue (Artiles et al., 2006).

Despite the aspirational status of disability within social justice, and four and a half decades after the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), conflicting views exist regarding the relationship between disability and social justice. For example, in an analysis of the content of three social justice handbooks published in 2009–2010 titled Does Dis/ability Now Sit at the Table(s) of Social Justice and Multicultural Education? Connor (2012) maintains, “as the formerly uninvited guest at the table of diversity within education, disability now sits in its rightful place among peers” (Conclusion, para 7). Conversely, a 2012 special issue of the Journal of Teacher Education on diversity and disability in teacher education featured leading multicultural, social justice, and disability-oriented teacher educators (i.e., Cochran-Smith & Dudley-Marling, 2012; Florian, 2012; Irvine, 2012; Pugach & Blanton, 2012; Rueda & Stillman, 2012; Villegas, 2012). They portrayed an enduring tradition of separation, reflecting distinct discourse communities and minimal interaction among teacher educators in social justice, diversity, multicultural education, and disability. Furthermore, calls for sustained dialogue across teacher educators concerned with social justice, equity, multicultural education, and disability persist (Blanton et al., 2018; Lalvani & Broderick, 2015).

In response to these conflicting positions, and given the “lack of attention to disability intersections with other sociocultural markers” (Artiles et al., 2016, p. 801), we undertook an inquiry to shed empirical light on the status of disability within social justice by systematically investigating how the research literature on social justice in teacher education treats disability. Three questions drove our analysis: (a) How frequently and in what ways does disability appear in the empirical literature on preparing teachers for social justice? (b) How integrated is disability within the study of social justice in teacher education? (c) How is disability treated in this literature with respect to intersections with social identity markers of other marginalized groups?

Framing the Inquiry

The absence of a homogeneous conceptualization of social justice, alongside the limitations of uni-dimensional definitions that are often used, has long troubled social justice scholars in education (e.g., North, 2006; Zeichner, 2011). The term social justice itself has become a “catchphrase” (North, 2006, p. 507) that fails to address the social, economic, cultural, and historical implications comprising this politically charged notion. Likewise, teacher education programs insert ambiguous portrayals of social justice into mission statements and syllabi, yet fail to challenge dominant preservice practices (McDonald & Zeichner, 2009). Despite the commitment to infusing social justice into research and teaching (Cochran-Smith et al., 2009; McDonald, 2005), the lack of consensus on definition makes translating ideology into practice difficult—especially for students who are impacted by the existing special education system. Complicating the situation with regard to disability, the discourse of inclusion itself reflects “disparate and often contradictory perspectives on social justice” (Artiles et al., 2006, p. 266).

Given this status quo, we began our work from the viewpoint that social justice, like inclusion, is inherently complex. In their critical analysis of inclusion as a form of social justice, Artiles et al. (2006) argue that “for inclusion to live up to its promise of social justice, future work must craft and test transformative models that tackle individual as well as historical and structural forces” (p. 266). As such, we adopted the following definition of social justice in education: social justice embraces the complex, intersectional identities of individuals, and the rich histories of communities, in the redistribution of resources and educational opportunities for all students, through a transformative process that disrupts the marginalization of non-dominant social groups. As we are interested in the complex relationship among all social markers of identity, we first attended to scholars such as Young (1990), whose theory of social justice emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between individual identity and group affiliation. Young underscores the need to respect social group differences, while arguing that individuals are not simply reflections of their experiences as members of particular social groups.

Addressing disability within the philosophy and practice of social justice, however, requires more than definitional complexity. For example, critical disability studies (CDS) scholars have elevated issues with the medical model of disability; the impact of the historic, structural segregation of students labeled as having disabilities; and the powerful special education infrastructure. Consequently, Erevelles (2005) analyzed the “invisibility of disability” (p. 428) in the field of curriculum studies, proposing radical transformation in the theory and practice of how disability is included. Brantlinger (2006) examined several U.S. special education textbooks; the individual/medical model narrative of disability dominated, alongside the absence of discourse regarding structural inequities in the educational system. Compared to CDS scholarship outside of the United States (specifically in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand), discourse reflecting the medical model is particularly salient in the United States (Mertens et al., 2011), where federal law pushes against more complex interpretations of disability (Artiles, 2013). The persistence of the medical model begins to convey a sense of the scope and depth of work required to reconceptualize how disability fits into the larger context of social justice—especially given the conceptual limitations inherent in the individual/medical model-social binary explanation of disability identity (Artiles, 2013).

Meekosha and Shuttleworth (2009) identified intersectionality as a fundamental principle for the CDS scholarly community in its capacity to articulate “theoretical and/or political alliances between CDS and other emancipatory discourses,” while simultaneously expressing concern that intersectionality scholars may adhere to the “mantra of race, gender, sexuality and class and continue to exclude other groups, such as disability and age” (p. 62). To achieve socially just teaching, the intricacies of students’ multiple and intersecting identities—disability among them—need to be acknowledged and understood in relationship to all other markers, and in relationship to the institutional and political structures within which they exist. This lies at the heart of intersectionality, based on both the intertwined effects of multiple identities (Crenshaw, 1989) and the need for policy-oriented solutions that transcend responding to singular identity groups in isolation (Hancock, 2007). Artiles (2013) argues that as a conceptual tool, intersectionality enables more complex ways of understanding disability within the full array of markers of difference and the nuances of group identity and individual experience, helping “gain insights about blind spots in the literature to understand how various categories and domains of experience have been disaggregated” (p. 332). This study aims to respond to these concerns regarding the relationship among markers of social identity in the context of research on social justice in teacher education, particularly in relation to disability.

Method

To identify studies for this systematic review, we sought research in which teacher education scholars used the language of social justice to frame their inquiries, rather than terms and concepts that function as subsets of or synonyms for social justice. Like Grant and Agosto (2008) and Mills and Ballantyne (2016), we identified empirical studies that included the term social justice in the title or abstract—suggesting that the authors regard themselves as social justice teacher educators. We targeted studies at the preservice level, incorporating those examining the first year of teaching only when researchers followed graduates of their own social justice oriented programs. Consistent with Boylan and Woolsey’s (2015) argument that the commitment to social justice is particularly prominent in the United States, we limited our review to U.S. studies but included one joint study between an American and Canadian researcher.

We targeted studies appearing in peer-reviewed journals between 1990 and 2016, selecting 1990 for three reasons. First, Cochran-Smith and Fries (2005) argued that social justice became a principal agenda for teacher education in 1990. This start date also allowed sufficient time for research on social justice to be undertaken before the status of social justice language was contested and subsequently removed from national U.S. teacher education standards in 2006 (see Cochran-Smith et al., 2009). Finally, Crenshaw developed the concept of intersectionality in relationship to multiple markers of social identity in 1989, making this concept available as an analytic tool regarding identity and equity.

To get an overall sense of the issues, we first studied reviews, conceptual analyses, and relevant chapters from social justice themed handbooks. Then we conducted keyword searches consistent with our research questions on EBSCO and Google Scholar, using the terms social justice and teacher education, social justice and preservice, social justice and preservice education, and social justice and disability. We then hand searched the contents of 14 major peer-reviewed journals focused on teacher education, disability, and social justice, as well as flagship journals in education. They included: Action in Teacher Education, American Educational Research Journal, Disability Studies Quarterly, Equity and Excellence in Education, Exceptional Children, International Journal of Inclusive Education, Journal of Special Education, Journal of Teacher Education, The New Educator, Teachers College Record, Teacher Education and Special Education, Teacher Education Quarterly, Teaching and Teacher Education, and Urban Education. Finally, we used ancestry searching to locate relevant articles we may have overlooked. Fifty-three studies met our criteria.

To analyze the studies, all authors first read every article. We met face-to-face on a regular basis to examine three articles at a time; each author prepared a written summary and led the discussion for one article. These joint discussions helped challenge our individual interpretations and minimize biases we may have brought to our reading. We crafted multiple matrices to summarize and analyze the studies and raise questions about their meaning. Our initial matrix included categories typical to literature reviews (author, theoretical framework, research questions, sample, methods/analysis, results, and key findings); these helped us familiarize ourselves with each study and begin to consider any disability-related issues within them. Next we completed several rounds of analysis specifically focused on social identity markers. We tabled (a) all social identity markers named in lists in the study, inclusive or exclusive of disability-related discourse; and (b) frequency of all disability-related discourse. Then we sorted the studies into four categories, illustrated in Figure 1. We tracked the evidentiary trail by recording relevant sections of text and their locations; this aided in reviewing excerpts in context as we looked to make meaning about social justice and disability across all 53 studies.

Figure 1.

Categories of disability mention.

We recorded notes during these discussions to track issues, emerging questions and concerns; these became secondary data sources for ongoing analysis. We maintained a comprehensive document on Google.docs with all tables and matrices, discussion summaries, and commentary, and prepared detailed memos on emerging ideas and themes. We regularly reviewed these documents to critique and refine our developing analyses and conclusions.

Results

Results are presented in four categories, as shown in Figure 1. First, we describe the 22 studies that omitted any mention of disability. Next, we consider the 14 studies that mentioned—but minimized—disability. Third, we discuss nine studies where disability emerged as a consideration, but only when it was generated in the results. Finally, we discuss the eight studies where disability was addressed more substantively across reports of research. Table 1 displays the frequency of disability-related discourse in the 31 studies in which disability was addressed.

Table 1.

Frequency of Disability-Related Discourse in Studies of Social Justice in Teacher Education.

Disability-related discourse	Frequency
Ability/abilities	8
Ability/disability	3
Ableism/ableist	6
Able-bodiedness	1
Access to academics for students with disabilities	1
ADHD	1
ASL (American sign language)	3
Blind/sight impairment	2
Deaf/deaf persons’ rights/deaf co-teaching	5
Disabled as well as able-bodied peers	1
(dis)ability	3
Disability/disabilities	17
Disability and diversity	1
Disability rights	1
Exceptionality	1
Exceptional students (in course title)	1
Handicapped	1
Inclusion/inclusive teaching-practice-educator-environment-educational contexts-models/inclusionary education	34
Nondisabled	1
Overrepresentation of students of color in special education	1
Special education teacher education program or category of teachers	11
Special education faculty	3
Special education students/students receiving special education services	9
Special needs context	1
Special Olympics volunteer	1
Students diagnosed with learning disabilities	1
Students with different/varied abilities	4
Students/children with disabilities (including “labeled disabilities”)	9
Students/children with special needs/special needs students/population	16
Students who may be academically different	1
Various physical, mental, and emotional conditions/disabilities/differences	3
Wheelchair ramp (in example of social studies lesson)	1
Total	152

Note. Twelve studies accounted for 84% of disability-related discourse; one (Taylor & Sobel, 2003) accounted for 24/34 mentions of inclusion. ADHD = attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; ASL = American Sign Language.

Omitting Disability

Twenty-two studies, or 42%, omitted the mention of disability entirely from their inquiries into social justice. Despite ample, logical opportunities to speak to disability within these studies, it was not addressed.

Twelve studies included lists of social markers of identity related to preparing teachers for social justice—naming identity markers such as race, class, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, or less often religion—but always omitting disability (Chubbuck, 2008; Chubbuck & Zembylas, 2008; Han et al., 2015; Hyland, 2010; Kelly-Jackson, 2015; Kraehe & Brown, 2011; Price, 2001; Rivera Maulucci, 2008, 2013; Sevier, 2005; Skerrett, 2010; Tinkler et al., 2014). Disability was not communicated as fundamental to the conceptualization of social justice driving these inquiries, nor as critical to preparing teachers for overcoming inequity.

Disability was likewise omitted in four studies in which issues related to disability were introduced beyond lists of identity markers but were never made explicit—representing opportunities to make such connections that went unexplored. For example, in Lynn and Smith-Maddox’s (2007) study on creating spaces for social justice dialogue, ability grouping/tracking was a major topic but was not linked to low expectations often held for students with special needs, nor how special education functions as a low track. Martin’s (2005) study of action research to promote social justice, and Ríos and Montecinos’ (1999) study of teacher candidate (TC) perceptions of multicultural education both cited Sleeter and Grant’s (1988) conception of multicultural education, which was unique early in the development of that field in counting disability as a seminal feature of multicultural education (Blanton et al., 2018). Yet neither of these studies made a connection to disability. Similarly, Cooper’s (2006) inquiry into faculty collaboration around social justice omitted any mention of disability, yet cited Cochran-Smith et al.’s (1999) work on faculty collaboration, which prominently featured disability throughout as core to social justice.

Six studies (Donahue, 1999; Fitts et al., 2008; Hoffman-Kipp, 2003; Moule, 2005; Oikonomidoy et al., 2013; Regenspan, 2002) focused on one well-defined marker of social identity other than disability, such that taking up disability may not have seemed relevant. None included lists of social identity markers in framing these studies.

This group of inquiries—representing nearly half of those reviewed—is striking in the absence of disability. The frequent, explicit mention of multiple social markers of identity, as well as citations from literature that feature disability, could have prompted authors to consider disability, but they did not serve this function. Among the many social identity markers universally recognized as central to preparing teachers for social justice, in these studies, disability is not visible.

Studies that Mention, but Minimize, Disability

Fourteen studies, or 26%, mentioned—but minimized—disability, which might appear in different ways within a single study, but always only sparingly. Furthermore, once mentioned, the significance of disability might be contradicted by its omission in relevant text elsewhere within that same study. In this way, discontinuities across the treatment of disability within the same report of research simultaneously validated—and minimized—disability’s role in social justice.

Disability (or “ability” or the ambiguous “difference”) might be mentioned a single time, for example, when describing the purposes of social justice and/or the aims and background of a social justice preservice program—sometimes in a quotation from or in reference to program descriptions or mission statements, sometimes in a conclusion (e.g., Baldwin et al., 2007; Bieler, 2012; Cantor, 2002; Knight, 2002; Quartz et al., 2003). Researchers might identify study participants as being enrolled or employed in a special education program (e.g., one each in Lee, 2011; Picower, 2011b; Whipp, 2013 and four in Picower, 2011a). Disability might also appear within a literature review (e.g., Kirkland, 2014). Thus, Leonard and Moore (2014), studying the value of literature circles to support Social Justice Pedagogy (SJP) in mathematics, included designing a wheelchair ramp as a prior example of a project connecting SJP and mathematics.

Disability might also be represented as part of research methods. In a narrative inquiry into their efforts as faculty members to focus on social justice (Olson & Craig, 2012), Olson used a “power flower” prompt (p. 438) that included disability among an array of diversity “petals.” Ritchie et al. (2013) conducted a study of a planned methods block designed to foster social justice in which TCs completed an initial survey that included an item on their “physical and mental abilities” (p. 69); TCs also heard guest lectures on social justice that included “hidden disabilities” (p. 69). Also in terms of methods, Enterline et al. (2008) studied the development and implementation of the Learning to Teach for Social Justice-Beliefs (LTSJ-B) scale, a 12-item scale designed to measure social justice outcomes in teacher education. The scale’s first item asked TCs to rate the importance of “examining one’s own attitudes and beliefs about race, class, gender, disabilities, and sexual orientation” (p. 275).

Studies in this category illustrate several contradictions in disability’s prominence. Although as noted, Lee (2011) acknowledged disability by mentioning one participant’s special education certification, data on students with disabilities was not included in a table describing the demographics of field experiences sites—a table that did include percentages of White and non-White students, students on free lunch, gender, and English language learners (ELL). Similarly, Enterline et al. (2008) viewed disability as a critical consideration, as represented in the first item on their social justice scale. Yet disability was not included in extensive initial descriptions of their social justice teacher education program mission, courses, and fieldwork—descriptions that prominently emphasized ELLs. Although Olson and Craig (2012) treated disability as essential to their new course focus on social justice, TCs were described as students who are “diverse in many ways, including gender, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, socioeconomic class, learning modalities and multiple intelligences . . . ” (p. 438). The ambiguous terms “learning modalities and multiple intelligences” could be referring to or inclusive of disability, but that meaning is not clear. Despite Ritchie et al.’s (2013) attention to disability in describing their methods, disability was not included in the description of a required “diverse” end-of-program field placement—a description that explicitly named students “from diverse racial backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, language backgrounds, and/or socioeconomic backgrounds” (p. 67). Likewise, Whipp (2013) identified one participant as an elementary special education teacher, describing how she advocated for including her students in the school’s mainstream activities. Yet in the final discussion, disability was omitted from a list of identity markers that did include “racial, ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic groups” (p. 10).

Finally, one of the four TC participants working in special education in Picower’s (2011a) study on providing support to new teachers to enact social justice reflected on what one of his special education peers in the group was able to accomplish. This TC recognized that he too could integrate social justice topics into the curriculum and raise his expectations for what his students were capable of doing—in contrast to the deficit orientation from which he believed he had been operating. Given that one-third of the participants in this study worked in special education settings, additional opportunities to address disability likely existed.

If mention in and of itself signifies some level of importance, in these studies, disability appears to hold some value in relationship to social justice in teacher education. Some authors introduced terms such as ability or (dis)ability, ostensibly to create dissonance with respect to the traditional medical model of disability. At the same time, discontinuities across the treatment of disability within these studies seem to reflect a reluctance to deeply engage in the discourse surrounding disability or to overcome contradictory omissions, which diminishes the significance of disability. Accordingly, casual mention alone does not help advance a nuanced understanding of the relationship between disability and other social markers of identity within the sphere of social justice.

Addressing Disability as It Surfaced in Results

Nine studies, or 17%, raised disability in a post hoc manner, only when disability-related data happened to have been generated in the findings. Such data were briefly presented—typically only once—within the results.

For example, Coffey et al. (2015) reported that TCs focused on “an appreciation for diversity of linguistic, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, intellectual and physical disability, and learning styles” (p. 15) as they created a fictitious “courageous” high school; unclear is whether the terms learning modalities, learning styles, or multiple intelligences also signaled disability, and if so, in what ways. Of the 96 NCATE conceptual frameworks that included social justice investigated by Kapustka et al. (2009), only one was reported to address disability, by preparing TCs to be “sensitive to students with special needs” (p. 500). Two studies (Farnsworth, 2010; McDonald et al., 2013) focused on TC narratives of social justice learning from community-based settings. Farnsworth reported that one student praised a mentor teacher for hosting a community representative who spoke about space requirements for handicapped parking spots. McDonald et al. (2013) suggested that community experiences led TCs to give “consideration to the intersectionality of race, language, (dis)ability, gender, and other categories” (p. 15). Compared with claims made in the results that were supported by examples, no such examples were included to support this claim.

Garri and colleagues studied the intersection of mathematics/science and social justice teaching. Describing poster presentations of student teachers’ lessons representing this intersection, Garii and Rule (2009) reported that 4/21 lessons referenced disability (e.g., counting numbers of students with disabilities, blindfolding primary students to simulate vision impairments). In a related study (Garii & Appova, 2013), TCs identified physical and mental disabilities, alongside other social identity markers, as potential topics for incorporating social justice into mathematics lessons; the authors emphasized that, given the implementation of inclusive education, it was critical to address TC misconceptions about disability.

Cochran-Smith et al. (2009) interviewed 12 volunteer TCs during their social justice–oriented program and into their first few months of teaching to determine how they thought about social justice and how it played out in their practice; none were special education teachers. All respondents focused on the goal of student learning; only one specifically identified meeting the needs of students with disabilities as core to social justice. The language of disability did not appear in any of the themes, 23 subcodes, or code descriptions developed from candidate interviews. Gender, race, class, and social inequities were explicitly stated in this analytic framework; in contrast, the subcode “accommodating different learners and differentiating instruction” (p. 358) did not explicitly identify—but may be referring to—disability. Studying faculty coherence in two social-justice oriented preservice programs, McDonald (2007) reported that one faculty conception of social justice focused on oppression, including students with special needs. She also cited the 1999 Cochran-Smith et al. study, in which disability as a civil rights issue figured prominently, as an example of faculty collaboration on social justice. Yet in concluding comments restating the need for improving teacher education for social justice, disability was omitted from lists that explicitly included “students of color, low-income students, and English language learners” (McDonald, 2007, pp. 2074, 2076).

An outlier within this category was Atwater et al.’s (2013) study of 37 Black science educators’ experiences with social justice, in which the single mention of disability seemed to hold special weight. One faculty member noted that, facing TC resentment when urban education was addressed, she chose instead to talk about disability and giftedness in terms of meeting student needs—rather than race.

These studies align with those that both bring up—thereby, potentially validating—and, soon after, minimize disability, in that attention to disability is brief and discontinuous. In contrast to the previous category, here the first mention of disability occurs only in reporting results, suggesting disability may be more of an afterthought, rather than an initial social justice consideration.

Addressing Disability More Substantively

In eight studies, or 15%, disability permeated reports of research, albeit with varying degrees of complexity. For example, in a self-study of a faculty group inquiring into definitions of social justice (Cochran-Smith et al., 1999; Zollers et al., 2000), disability was a deliberate consideration from the outset; inclusive education was identified as one of seven social justice movements representing influential roots for their joint work. One of the authors, as well 6 of the 15 faculty participants, was identified as faculty in special education, while others appeared as “General Education Faculty.”

In the Foundations course they studied, Frederick et al. (2010) named the over-representation of students of color in special education as a significant social justice issue. Students completed a simulation on inclusion and viewed the movie Educating Peter, a documentary featuring an elementary student with Down Syndrome. Describing growth made by one TC, Tammy, with respect to her increased support for inclusive teaching in response to these activities, the authors noted that despite progress, Tammy “would need more work to hold herself accountable for meeting the needs of all students in an inclusive classroom” (p. 321). In contrast to the Lynn and Smith-Maddox (2007) study discussed earlier, which omitted disability in relationship to tracking, these authors explicitly linked problems with tracking to the low achievement of students who are segregated by perceived learning capacity—and viewed preparation for inclusive teaching as integral to culturally responsive teaching.

Reporting on case studies of how three first-year graduates of their inclusive, social justice–oriented preservice elementary program enacted a social justice curriculum, Agarwal et al. (2010) emphasized disability rights and ableism as fundamental to social justice, terms that were consistently placed alongside racism, sexism, nationalism, and linguistic privilege. One participant, Lucy, co-taught in an English-American Sign Language elementary school and “explicitly connected social justice to the concerns that she had about the stratification and marginalization that exists within society” (p. 241). They continued, “Lucy spoke with passion about fighting the repercussions of both racism and ableism in the lives of her [deaf and hard-of-hearing] students” (p. 241), embedding disability into a broader scope of social justice, and acknowledging the multiple and intersecting jeopardies posed by racism and ableism. Allison, a fifth-grade teacher in a racially diverse setting, “was drawn to ideals that highlight fairness, inclusion, voice and participation” (p. 243). The authors urged “beginning teachers and teacher educators to create avenues for classrooms that challenge racist, sexist, classist, ableist, and heterosexist norms” (p. 245).

McDonald (2005, 2008) studied two preservice programs selected because of their social justice missions. She observed that in both, fewer opportunities were provided for candidates to learn to teach students with special needs compared to ELLs. As a heuristic for faculty to problematize their social justice practices, she offered a typology focused on: (a) meeting the needs of students as individuals; (b) membership in a specific category of educational needs; (c) membership in an oppressed group; and (d) addressing structural inequities. Students with special needs and ELLs were assigned to the category “educational need”—in contrast to students identified as members of “oppressed groups,” which included, for example, “race, ethnicity, gender, class, and/or sexual orientation” (p. 427). The learning opportunities these programs offered, she reported, limited the connections candidates were encouraged to make across categories, indicating a potential role for intersectionality. However, while teacher educators were advised to create opportunities to encourage thinking across artificial separations, the typology did not advocate for intersectionality as critical to a practice of social justice. Nor was direction provided to teacher educators to assure that students who have disabilities—whose needs were poorly addressed in these two programs—were not displaced from their intersectional experiences of oppression.

Reagan et al. (2016) studied the developing social justice beliefs of participants in a residency program for teachers of ELL and special education, focusing on how families “experience marginalization and exclusion (e.g., on the basis of race, ethnicity, social class, disability, gender, nationality, sexuality, language, religious affiliation, etc.)” (p. 215). One data source, autobiographical statements, prompted residents to examine their “own positionalities (related to your identities vis a vis social class, race/ethnicity, gender, dis/ability, sexuality, etc.),” as well as “notions of cognition/ability” (p. 217), and how they would act out their responsibilities as “inclusive educators” (p. 217). Both dis/ability and ableism appeared in a partial list of qualitative codes; results emphasized the importance of “. . . instilling values against racial and social discrimination, particularly with English Language learners and students with labeled disabilities” (p. 222). Furthermore, the use of the terms dis/ability, ableism, and labeled disabilities begins to create some dissonance regarding how disability is conceptualized. The authors concluded that residents had complicated their views of the social political landscape, individual experiences and backgrounds, and student learning. Only one candidate from the special education program was quoted in these results; in addition, disability was mentioned only in relationship to the theme of complicating student learning. The authors acknowledged that TCs might be reflecting social justice discourse learned in their program; as such, the discourse of intersectionality did not appear to play a prominent role in that curriculum as an additional means of complicating social justice.

Finally, Taylor and Sobel (2003) foregrounded disability using a trinity of equity concerns to frame their study, namely, preparing teachers for “multicultural, multilingual and inclusive” (p. 251) classrooms in professional development school (PDS) settings—a trinity repeated 23 times in the paper. “Ability” appeared in a list of social identity factors that teachers “must address” (p. 249). Results suggest that in these settings, TCs had positive initial exposure to diversity in terms of language, ethnicity, sociocultural status, and ability. Faculty involved with PDSs were urged to assure that “students with special needs be represented in all PDS placements” (p. 254); the authors likewise emphasized preparing teachers for working with “students with special needs” (p. 255). However, although PDS placements were described as modeling inclusive practice, few details were provided beyond TC testimonies, and TCs requested additional opportunities to examine diversity and inclusion. Therefore, it is not clear what kinds of inclusive practices were in place in these settings, and the degree to which they may have disrupted traditional segregated special education practice. The authors concluded by noting the challenge of preparing teachers for students “whose cultural, racial, linguistic, and religious backgrounds often differ from their own” (p. 256), omitting disability from this list—and then circle back to cite their trinity. The trinity itself, however, appeared to essentialize culture, language, and disability, rather than consider these social identity markers intersectionally.

Discussion

The limited presence of disability across this literature suggests that much work needs to be done to assure that disability is taken into account in consistent and meaningful ways in preparing teachers for the practice of social justice. As Slee (2001) noted some time ago, disability continues to be omitted substantively “from the social justice inventory” (p. 174). When disability is mentioned, it is isolated as a discrete social marker of identity—essentializing it as simply another item in this “inventory.” When studies casually mention disability, as opposed to mentioning it substantively, some authors use terms such as ability, dis/ability, or (dis)ability. Invoking terms like these begins to acknowledge disability as a socially constructed phenomenon, yet these same terms can also represent limitations, as they can reify the medical-social construction binary, and fail to validate intersectional identities (e.g., Artiles, 2013).

Not only is mention of disability generally lacking, but opportunities to prompt deeper engagement with disability can go unexploited. When disability appears in lists of social identity markers, it is often included inconsistently—raising questions regarding the purpose and meaning of such lists in the first place (Pugach et al., 2019). Opportunities for more consistent disability-related discourse are likewise squandered when disability is acknowledged as important in one section of a report (e.g., citing research that prominently features disability in justifying a study) but ignored elsewhere in the same report when its consideration would be fitting.

In addition to problems with the mention of disability, intersectionality is also largely ignored. Lucy, the first year teacher in Agarwal et al.’s (2010) study, who recognized racism and ableism as multiple jeopardies facing her deaf students, is an exception. McDonald (2005) and McDonald et al. (2013) acknowledged interlocking oppressions and intersectionality, but failed to probe how social justice teacher education programs might address these issues.

We are left wondering why disability seems to be such an uncomfortable fit in this literature. We do not make the assumption that teacher education researchers committed to studying social justice are purposefully disregarding, discontinuously addressing, or under-engaging with disability. Rather, its limited presence suggests that even with the best of intentions, and despite the growing national and international emphasis on restructuring education to foster inclusive educational practices across the full array of social identity markers, uncertainty exists about the place of disability within the arc of social justice teacher education. We propose two explanations that might account for such benign neglect.

The Instructional Dominance Explanation

One explanation is that disability is viewed narrowly as an instructional challenge, decontextualized from the very structural and intersectional oppressions that impact education. Exacerbated by legal mandates, teaching students who have disabilities may be singularly perceived as challenging teachers’ pedagogical skills, compelling a narrow focus on questions of how, for example, to differentiate instruction—which often appears to function as a code word for solving everything instructional related to disability. Viewing disability as uniquely urgent instructionally suggests that a typology like McDonald’s (2005, 2008), for example—where special educational needs are differentiated from needs generated by structural social oppressions—may be routinely operating within teacher education in ways that are not being clearly articulated at the level of everyday teacher education practice.

This explanation also appears to privilege TCs gaining high levels of pedagogical skill to work with struggling students—neither an insignificant nor inconsequential goal for the practice of social justice. However, because it is decontextualized from the historical trajectory of an entrenched special education infrastructure—a central concern in CDS scholarship—the power of these pedagogical skills may be diminished. A one-dimensional focus on pedagogical skill fails to take into account not only how a student might have come to be assigned the label of disability (however appropriately or inappropriately), but also the reality that any student’s needs reflect a complex interaction of individual, structural, and cultural dynamics. Consequently, novice teachers may employ inadequate and potentially inappropriate solutions for multifaceted challenges students labeled as having disabilities may face due to their multiple markers of identity. For example, teachers may privilege disability-related services for students who are both English learners and have a disability (Kangas, 2017), or may assume that particular pedagogies are appropriate only for students who are labeled as having disabilities—limiting their potential applicability across the array of student needs.

Finally, essentializing disability as a decontextualized instructional matter can feed into the belief that special education teachers alone have the instructional expertise to address students labeled as having disabilities—implying confidence that the prevailing special education infrastructure, which to date has not been able to ensure the academic success of many students with special needs, is adequate for addressing the problem. It may also suggest that special education teachers alone should take primary responsibility for fighting against the marginalization of students who are labeled as having a disability—posing problems for building alliances across, and beyond, existing practices in special and general education to transform the educational system.

The Challenge of Complexity Explanation

A second potential explanation for the weak treatment of disability involves the complexity required to situate disability within the context of its companion markers of social identity. Philosophically, few question that disability belongs in the social justice landscape—which may account for the disability-related chapters in the handbooks Connor (2012) stipulates as evidence of disability’s presence at the social justice table. The reluctance to engage disability discourse in the research literature reviewed here, however, seems to indicate that disability does not hold parity with social identity markers regularly acknowledged under the umbrella of equity, which in teacher education routinely includes race, ethnicity, language, culture, gender, social class, and more recently, religion, and sexual preference.

Discomfort with where and how disability belongs illustrates uncertainty about how to situate disability within the practice of social justice, a lack of confidence regarding how to discuss disability in this larger context, and an absence of appropriate discourse with which to capture its relationship to all other social markers of difference. This explanation underscores the need to complicate disability within teacher education, drawing on a discourse of complexity to assure that disability gains meaningful, productive status in relationship to social justice research and teaching practice.

Underutilized in this literature, the concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) provides one relevant, complex discourse opportunity. From an intersectionality perspective, disability is never a student’s sole social identity marker, but co-exists with other equally salient markers that also jeopardize children and youth—markers too often discounted in the presence of a label of disability. But as is the case with all markers of difference, disability sits both in the foreground and background of the full complement of identity markers all students labeled as having a disability possess. Depending on the situation on any given day and given time in school, students’ multiple markers of identity can shift both in their prominence and their immediacy relative to teachers’ pedagogical decisions—but only if the intricacy of these intersectional identities is recognized and appreciated. This does not minimize the meaning of any individual marker, nor its salient risk for jeopardy. What it does suggest is that the danger of essentializing identity is much greater when students are not inherently viewed as multifaceted with respect to their social markers of identity. Importantly, an intersectional view of identity is missing not only from the literature reviewed here, but also within the special education research literature itself (Artiles et al., 2016).

Sustaining a view of identity as inherently complex and multifaceted may be more difficult than we realize, however. For teacher educators, the challenge of complexity explanation must go beyond looking intersectionally at student identity as a fluid configuration made up of multiple identities in relationship to the institutional structures that impact those identities. In drawing upon intersectionality to problematize identity within social justice, instruction itself must constitute a central consideration.

Teachers and teacher educators need support in developing the capacity for managing the balance between students’ multiple identities and the multiple instructional approaches required to respond to complex, identity-related, fluid educational needs. Resolving how disability is situated within social justice requires a more complex, nuanced conception of the relationship between social identity and instruction, one in which they too are viewed intersectionally. As social justice researchers in teacher education consider instruction for students who need support, it is critical to look at instruction across social identity markers to disrupt how the dominant education infrastructure views and essentializes instruction in response to those struggles. We refer to this as intersectionality-driven instruction.

Intersectionality-driven instruction stretches intersectionality discourse to embrace the relationship between identity and instruction, highlighting the need for schools to build capacity to provide relevant pedagogy when students’ multiple identity markers are honored as natural and routine. This is not limited to expanding the curriculum to include, for example, units and lessons that feature aspects of disability oppression. While such expansion is imperative, intersectionality-driven instruction is meant to stimulate action about both how and what students learn in relationship to their multiple identities. This represents one way of disrupting and renegotiating targeted educational services that now essentialize students and their learning needs—and has the potential to transform what it means to provide focused, specialized instruction in the first place—in ways we have not yet imagined. Further, consistent with intersectionality’s potential for alliance building, developing instructional alliances becomes critical within the context of intersectionality-driven instruction. These alliances must transcend the discourse of “general” and “special education,” creating new and unusual coalitions to challenge the practices of teacher education, for example, by cross-pollinating Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Universal Design of Learning (Waitoller & Thorius, 2016).

We recognize the irony that in disaggregating disability for this analysis, we have reified isolating the very identity marker we argue needs to be looked at intersectionally. Our goal, however, is to more fully understand disability itself in the context of social justice, then reintroduce it to the social justice “table” through an intersectional perspective—providing the potential to represent the complexity of how disability interacts with other social identity markers, as well as implications for rethinking instruction intersectionally.

Implications

In light of the claim that disability has achieved a place at the social justice table (Connor, 2012), in this literature disability seems more like a precarious dinner guest than a welcomed one. Given the historical, dominant separation of special and “general” education, routinely failing to include, as well as the tendency to downplay disability, may seem unremarkable. Yet, given the assumption that disability belongs within the overall quest for social justice, the question is how to resolve this ambiguous and unsettled state of affairs. To this end, we offer three recommendations.

First, it is critical that researchers interrogate their own views about disability at the initial stages of planning social justice inquiries in teacher education. What is it about disability that might prove important in the study from the perspective of both complex identities and instruction? What anticipated results might invoke the need to consider disability from the outset? This requires sustained dialogue across faculty in social justice and multicultural education, academic curricular areas, and special education to assure that disability-related discourse occurs within multifaceted communities of scholars. Such communities have the potential to forge the equity alliances that intersectionality and CDS scholars alike cite as critical to transformation. In this way, social justice researchers in teacher education can routinely begin to describe students’ identities as intersectional, elevating our understandings regarding the fluid, complex nature of student identities—as well as their complex, potentially overlapping instructional implications.

Second, teacher education researchers can strive for consistency and clarity in their own discourse of social justice. Specific discursive choices that reference disability, either explicitly or implicitly, should be made intentionally, with researchers taking ownership of those choices. If several markers of social identity are included to define social justice issues, it is critical to consider how and why disability is located and characterized among them. Explicitly attending to the relationship among disability and more frequently mentioned social markers of identity should take precedence over lists of essentialized, discrete identity markers.

Finally, if teacher education for social justice is to achieve its goals, it is critical to disrupt dominant preservice institutional practices in ways that transcend and transform the historical separation between special and general education. Today’s efforts to redesign teacher education are embedded within this long-standing separation—a preservice problem that exists both within and outside of the United States (Waitoller & Kozleski, 2013). And while developments like dual certification may represent an opportunity to engage in serious reform, these efforts face several obstacles, among them authentic shared ownership across the full array of teacher education disciplines, and how to situate disability within the full array of difference (Blanton & Pugach, in press)—and typically fail to establish and sustain new alliances so vital to supporting this level of change. Consequently, it may be critical to shift away from the discourse of dual certification and its practical focus on earning two licenses, and toward coalition building that can create the conditions for the deep restructuring of teacher education (Blanton & Pugach, 2011).

Although these dynamics might take place in relationship to disability, resolution does not lie in solving the problem because of disability alone. Disability may prompt these initial conversations, but such efforts need to be predicated on a fluid, intersectional approach to student identity that assures that no marker of difference is ignored, and that the needs each marker may generate for students at any given moment are attended to in productive, respectful and asset-oriented instructional ways, in the full context of students’ complex identities.

This investigation illustrates that disability remains an intractable problem in relationship to social justice, requiring a need to engage far greater complexity—and plain hard work—to transcend its precarious status quo. Assuring disability a consistent, unambiguous seat at the social justice table necessitates robust, innovative understandings of the full dimensionality of social justice to achieve the deep transformation of teacher education, predicated on collective ownership. Located at the interstices of identity and instruction, disability may offer a unique site where transformational questions of identity and instruction can be challenged simultaneously and recursively. As such, disability may hold the potential to serve as a pivot upon which teacher educators oriented toward social justice begin not only to address these ambiguities, but simultaneously help right long-standing wrongs with regard to disability, thus strengthening social justice as a common endeavor.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Marleen C. Pugach

Author Biographies

Marleen C. Pugach, PhD, is professor emerita in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her scholarly interests are focused on teacher education policy, practice, and reform at the intersection of general and special education; situating disability within the larger question of equity in the preparation of teachers, especially for urban schools; dual certification; and qualitative research methods.

Ananya M. Matewos, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at University of Maryland, and an incoming assistant professor of education at St. Norbert College. Her research and scholarly interests are situated at the intersection of teaching and learning. Specifically, her research focuses on motivation and learning across various classroom environments.

Joyce Gomez-Najarro, PhD, is assistant professor in the Department of Literacy and Reading Education at California State University, Fullerton. Her research and scholarly interests include teachers’ understandings of, and approaches to, assessment and academic intervention in the context of literacy instruction when serving diverse learners; teachers’ treatment of student identity within educational policies and teaching practice; and social justice in teacher education.

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