Strategies for Teachers Who Face Opposition to Reading Disability Literature With Children

Importance of Reading Disability Literature

Numerous reasons have been given for why reading disability literature is essential for learners of all ages. First, the use of disability literature with children contributes to children’s development and learning in important ways. For example, young children build personal meaning about human diversity, including disability, through interpersonal engagement and communication with others, such as family members, teachers, and peers (Beneke & Cheatham, 2020). Thus, using high-quality, positive representations of disabilities in children’s literature provides a foundation of knowledge that will allow children to learn and appreciate various forms of human diversity and engage in more critical conversations related to disability, including negative depictions, as they get older (Meyer, 2021; Tondreau & Rabinowitz, 2021).

“Reading children’s books that positively represent disability can serve as a catalyst for conversations among teachers, children, and families to support strengths-based and antiableist perspectives toward disabilities.

Second, schools may mirror the larger society and position students with disabilities as “less than” their peers without disabilities (Prince & Hayden, 2021). As such, reading children’s books that positively represent disability can serve as a catalyst for conversations among teachers, children, and families to support strengths-based and anti-ableist perspectives toward disabilities. Talking about disabilities using children’s literature helps children find similarities between themselves and peers with disabilities and teaches that everyone is an essential and meaningful member of their class community and in our society (Ostrosky et al., 2015). Further, books that include characters with disabilities contribute to a school’s landscape of multicultural literature and communicates the acceptance of all forms of human differences (Pennell et al., 2017). For students with disabilities, when they do not see themselves in the literature they are reading, it can negatively impact their sense of belonging in their classroom communities. Thus, reading children’s literature that include book characters with disabilities promotes children’s positive attitudes toward peers with disabilities and their self-concept if they have a disability (Favazza et al., 2017).

Given the importance of reading disability literature with children, resources and guidelines for critically evaluating disability representation in children’s literature have been widely disseminated (Artman-Meeker et al., 2016; Meyer, 2021; Nasatir & Horn, 2003). For example, Meyer (2021) provided a synthesis of guidelines for selecting disability literature for young children, such as reflecting on the representation of self-determined individuals and accurate representations and insight into disabled life. Several researchers have also suggested a list of children’s books and reflective questions that teachers and families can use when they talk about disabilities with their young children (Favazza et al., 2016; Ostrosky et al., 2015). Recently, scholars have emphasized how to use disability literature along with close reading practices with elementary students to engage them in critical literacy conversations about disability (Tondreau & Rabinowitz, 2021) and support their knowledge linked to reading literacy and spoken language standards (e.g., “If the book character with a disability was your classmate, how would you describe him?” “Why might you want to be friends with the book character?” Prince & Hayden, 2021, p. 6).

Teachers Face Unanticipated Opposition to Disability Literature

Although many teachers hold generally positive views of using disability literature with children to support the development of more inclusive communities and schools (Beneke & Cheatham, 2020), little is known about how teachers work with families and address concerns families may have about using such literature. It seems unlikely that families would oppose the inclusion of disability literature in their children’s classroom. However, several articles have presented concerns that families and teachers may have when reading disability literature (e.g., Artman-Meeker et al., 2016; Meyer et al., 2016; Park & Ostrosky, 2014; Yu, 2021). Like the teacher highlighted in the vignette, progressive teachers may be stumped when families present concerns to them about reading disability literature with children. What follows are three primary concerns that have been expressed by families to their children’s teachers about using disability literature in early childhood and early elementary classrooms. Salient research evidence to support teachers’ use of disability literature is provided along with recommended proactive strategies to support communication, collaboration, and mutual knowledge sharing between families and teachers. We summarize these strategies for proactive family–teacher collaboration on the topic of reading disability literature in Table 1. We also want to acknowledge that many inclusive general educators have close working relationships with special educators. We assume that general education teachers are the drivers behind reading and integrating disability literature into their classroom curriculum. However, we want to stress the importance of collaboration between educators and the support that can be provided among professionals when proactively creating classrooms and school environments that integrate disability literature or addressing families’ concerns should they arise.

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Table 1

Proactive Strategies for Family–Teacher Collaboration When Reading Disability Literature

Family concerns	Steps teachers can take
“My child is too young to understand disability.”	• Engage in dialogue with families to explore their perspectives about disability (see example questions in Table 2). • Share how young children develop meanings of disability and why it is important to talk about human diversity, including disability. • Encourage families to share any experiences talking about human diversity (e.g., race, disability) with their children at home. • Share how antibias education is represented in your classroom and school environment (e.g., open house, classroom newsletters). • Listen to families’ experiences and perspectives, and consider what approaches may need to be taken to disrupt ableism among families and children. • Encourage family participation in schoolwide activities that foster understanding of human differences and an inclusive school community for all children (e.g., schoolwide workshops on disability and other forms of diversity).
“Disability literature may stigmatize my child with a disability.”	• Share with families the careful process for selecting books for classroom read-alouds, including indicators used for evaluation. • Communicate the value of reading disability literature with children, including how these books link to individual child, classroom, grade-level, or schoolwide learning standards or goals. • Assume a posture of cultural reciprocity and invite families to share their values and views on reading disability literature with children, and be ready to reciprocate by sharing your own values and views. • Identify family preferences for how their children’s disabilities are introduced and discussed in class, and develop a plan for how all children, and particularly children with disabilities, will be supported before, during, and after the read-aloud. • Emphasize messages communicated from school leaders (e.g., principal, head librarian) that support reading and discussing disability literature with young children.
“Disability conversation makes me uncomfortable.”	• Use a classroom lending library to promote families’ shared reading of high-quality books that include characters with disabilities at home. • Share discussion guides with families that highlight similarities between their child and book characters with disabilities, and position disability as a valued form of human diversity. • Collect family feedback on the classroom lending library. • Promote schoolwide events that help families practice difficult conversations, including those about disabilities, in a safe space guided by specialists (e.g., special educator, school counselor, psychologist).

Family Concern 1: “My Child Is Too Young to Understand Disability”

Some families told me their children were too young to understand “disability,” and another shared, “I don’t want my son to recognize differences and disabilities in other people. I want him to see everyone as equal. Reading these books will hinder his budding notion of equality.

Much to some adults’ surprise, children’s identity development begins before the age of 2 (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2020). As children begin to develop their own self-concept, they are identifying attributes, attitudes, values, and abilities that distinguish themselves from others (Favazza et al., 2016). These may be considered early labels that children learn and apply to their life simply through observing and interacting with the world around them. To better understand their own capabilities, young children between the ages of 4 and 6 years old use this form of information gathering to begin evaluating their own abilities against what peers know and can do. Due to this, at an early age, children begin to recognize and understand ability differences in their peers (Babik & Gardner, 2021).

Children as young as a preschool can identify some disabilities, such as physical disabilities, hearing impairments, and visual impairments, and as they get older, they become increasingly aware of less visible disabilities, such as intellectual disabilities and speech delays (Yu & Ostrosky, 2012). Young children also may notice that some of their peers use special equipment, such as wheelchairs, hearing aids, or communication devices (Park & Ostrosky, 2014). They also may understand varying competencies of their peers (e.g., “He [a child with cerebral palsy] can crawl but can’t walk”) and recognize different behaviors in their peers (e.g., “Mary [a child with a seizure disorder] sometimes froze a little bit when we line up for the gym”; Yu et al., 2015, p. 46).

Some children may have limited or incorrect understandings about people with disabilities. For example, Diamond and Hestenes (1994) showed that some preschool children misunderstood a child’s hearing aids as headphones. They reasoned that this was what impacted their peer’s ability to hear (e.g., “They put little things [ear plugs] in his ears so he couldn’t hear anymore”; Diamond & Hestenes, 1994, p. 307). Like the children in this study, young children are able to identify differences seen among their peers, even if they do not have the correct vocabulary to describe what they are observing. The results from these studies also suggest that young children recognize peers’ disabilities, regardless of adult involvement, and they try their best to understand the differences based on their existing cognitive structures and experiences. Thus, stereotypes or misconceptions about disabilities that young children independently form might persist without adult guidance.

When families communicate that they want their children to “see everyone as equal” to promote ideas of equality, recent psychological research on racial color blindness may be informative. In a survey of 165 White parents, Abaied and Perry (2021) found that in addition to avoiding race-related conversations, some parents gave their children mixed messages about race. Mixed messages included combining aspects of both color consciousness (i.e., “particularly endorsing equal treatment or acknowledgment of racism”) and color blindness (i.e., “race does not matter”) (Abaied & Perry, 2021, p. 437). More research is needed to understand how families socialize their children to think about disabilities. However, stating a desire for equal treatment for individuals with disabilities while avoiding conversations about disability might be antithetical to supporting children’s ideas of equality. Instead, providing a safe space for young children to learn and ask about disability can promote children’s making sense of disability and embracing human differences without stigmatizing the differences, thus potentially leading to more equitable communities for everyone.

As inclusive classrooms become a more common practice in early childhood and elementary settings, teachers must talk about human differences, including disabilities, with young children to help them understand what they are observing. Inclusive classrooms provide many opportunities for young children to interact with peers with diverse abilities. However, including children with disabilities in inclusive classrooms is unlikely to spontaneously help peers without disabilities learn and understand about disabilities without explicit conversations about inequities present in the lives of individuals with disabilities. Disability literature provides teachers with an outlet to promote these types of conversations and facilitate children’s development of accurate and positive perspectives related to disability and strengthen children’s character to be classroom members who act with fairness toward others.

Strategies for Family–Teacher Collaborations

Involving families in their children’s education requires proactive techniques to build relationships (Sawyer, 2015). From the beginning of family–teacher relationships, teachers can explore families’ perspectives about disability and other aspects of human diversity (Diamond & Hestenes, 1994; Hong et al., 2014; Yu, 2021). A list of example questions that teachers can proactively use to explore family perspectives about children’s development of self-concept, diversity conversations, and disability is found in Table 2. Engaging in family–teacher conversations centered on these questions can serve as a window into several essential topics that can create a supportive context for reading disability literature with children. This includes family members’ goals for their children’s knowledge related to human diversity, past conversations focused on diversity that they may or may not have had with their children, and their attitudes toward disability along with exposure to individuals with disabilities in their children’s lives. The questions presented in Table 2 are meant to be asked over a series of conversations with families to more fully explore their perspectives, preferences, and attitudes. The questions are not meant to be exclusive or sequential in nature. Teachers can select the questions that will further a trusting relationship with families and provide insightful knowledge that will facilitate reading and discussing disability literature.

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Table 2

Example Questions for Teachers to Proactively Explore Family Perspectives About Children’s Development of Self-Concept, Diversity Conversations, and Disability

Questions about children’s self-concept	• How do you hope your child would describe who they are? • How do you approach teaching your child about the ways that they are similar to and unique from their peers? • At what age do you think children start to recognize differences in peers’ abilities?
Questions about diversity in general	• What aspects of diversity (e.g., racial, religious, gender) have you already discussed with your child? • What aspects of diversity are difficult for you to discuss with your child? What makes it difficult? • When it comes to the topic of human differences, what do you hope your child will know and be able to do?
Questions specific to disability	• Think about an experience that you have had with an individual with a disability. Was it a positive or negative experience? What do you feel when you think about that moment? How, if at all, do you think this experience influences your decision to discuss disabilities with your child? • What terms do you use to talk about disabilities with your child? • Does your child have a favorite book, TV show, or movie that includes a character with a disability? • Does your child have a family member or close friend who has a disability?

School leaders and teachers who embrace antibias education and emphasize teaching toward social justice reject the notion that children are too young to understand issues related to disability (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2020). Instead, they seek to disrupt ableism, which can be defined as “a system that places value on people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, intelligence, excellence, and productivity” (Lewis, 2020, para. 3) as early as possible among both children and their families (Rausch et al., 2019). Disrupting ableism can be achieved when school leaders and teachers promote disability as a valued form of human diversity, create spaces for rethinking the constructs of disability, and teach children to embrace differences without stigmatizing those differences based on disability (Lalvani & Bacon, 2019). This endeavor might include schoolwide and classroom-specific efforts to educate families on how antibias education is actualized in school and classroom environments, such as hosting schoolwide workshops for families on how aspects of human diversity are discussed with children and sharing titles of multicultural, including disability, literature being read through school and classroom newsletters. School leaders and teachers have an essential role in communicating that their school and classrooms foster an inclusive, supportive, and connected community for all young learners and their families. The practice of discussing human differences and disabilities with young children could ultimately promote all children’s social development and be an essential facet of encouraging children with and without disabilities to sustain positive interactions with each other (Division for Early Childhood, 2014).

“Stating a desire for equal treatment for individuals with disabilities while avoiding conversations about disability might be antithetical to supporting children’s ideas of equality.

Family Concern 2: “Disability Literature May Stigmatize My Child With a Disability”

A father of a child who has selective mutism wrote me, too. He is worried that if I read texts about children with disabilities who do not talk, his daughter will be singled out, and it could lead to peers treating her differently.

Like the father in the vignette, some families might worry about whether learning about different types of disabilities through classroom read-alouds might detrimentally impact their children who are identified as having a disability. Families may fear how their children will view themselves while a story is being read and how classmates may come to view their children after reading a story featuring a character with a disability (e.g., Artman-Meaker et al., 2016). However, if teachers and families are silent about human differences in general, and disability in particular, it may lead children to think that some kinds of differences are less desirable and certain groups are less valued. The implicit messages that children receive through such silences can reinforce deficit perspectives of disability as well as ableism (Lalvani & Bacon, 2019). With this in mind, thoughtful and meaningful classroom conversations about disability, fostered by children’s literature, can work to destigmatize disability. These efforts are too important to keep quiet and should be encouraged for the benefit of children with and without disabilities.

Family Concern 3: “Disability Conversation Makes Me Uncomfortable”

Disability conversation makes me uncomfortable. I certainly do not know how to talk with my young child about disabilities. Reading books with her class could put me in an awkward position if she asks me questions or wants to continue the conversation at home.

Children’s ideas and attitudes about people with disabilities may be most influenced by the significant adults in their lives, especially their caregivers (Hellmich & Loeper, 2019). Thus, parents’ ideas and comments about people with disabilities can influence children’s attitudes and behaviors toward peers with disabilities. Yet, many families may not talk about disabilities with their young children. In fact, Park and Ostrosky (2014) found that when reading books that included characters with disabilities, mothers tended to talk more about the story line and characteristics of book characters (e.g., age, gender) with their kindergarten-age children rather than the disabilities depicted in the book. Yu (2021) also revealed that a large number of parents had never talked about disabilities with their kindergarten- or first grade–age children. Like the parent in the vignette, families’ uncomfortableness may lead to ignoring or intentionally choosing not to discuss the topic of disability with their children.

“Families’ uncomfortableness may lead to ignoring or intentionally choosing not to discuss the topic of disability with their children.

The absent conversations between families and their children about disability may not be reserved solely for families who feel uncomfortable talking about disabilities. Several researchers have discovered that parents’ progressive attitudes toward individuals with disabilities were not positively correlated with their young children’s attitudes toward peers with disabilities (Hong et al., 2014; Park & Ostrosky, 2014; Yu, 2021). The findings suggest that family members may not share their progressive ideas and positive attitudes about people with disabilities with their young children. Their silence, could in turn, influence their children’s negative attitude formation toward peers with disabilities.

“Teachers and families can work together to address these concerns and establish a learning environment dedicated to including disability literature without worry or fear.

Final Thoughts

There is still more to learn about the reasons underlying some families’ opposition to reading disability literature with young children. The three concerns presented here are only a sample of oppositional statements that may be held by families. Reflecting on these three concerns expressed by families regarding teachers’ use of disability literature in early childhood and early elementary settings, we believe that they are rooted in some form of fear, for example, the fear that discussions about disabilities are not developmentally appropriate, the fear that talking about disabilities will create barriers to equality in classrooms, the fear that reading disability literature could inadvertently harm children with disabilities, or the fear of not knowing the “right” things to say.

Paramount when collaborating with families is for teachers to use proactive strategies, like those suggested in this article, to prevent concerns from emerging. Included in those proactive strategies is active listening to ensure families’ voices are heard and continuing to listen closely, especially if concerns develop. If teachers feel that family concerns are rooted in fear, similar to the examples shared here, it may be important to remember that fear is an essential emotion (Lama et al., 2016). Teachers can acknowledge families’ worries, letting them know that their concerns are an indication of a significant moment in which one does not want to hurt, hamper, or harm something, someone, or one’s own self. Through communication and collaboration, teachers and families can work together to address these concerns and establish a learning environment dedicated to including disability literature without worry or fear.