Mental health research concerning adverse childhood experiences and neurocognitive trauma has prompted many school districts to pursue the development of trauma-informed schools that attend specifically to the emotional and instructional needs of affected students. Researchers and practitioners are fast proliferating trauma-informed professional practices. Given research findings indicating disproportionate impacts of trauma on students of color and those living in poverty, in this article, we examine the risks of trauma-informed educational programs reanimating cultural deficit theories from the 1960s about marginalized students and families. Educators are challenged to thoughtfully fortify trauma-informed schooling by increasing awareness of deficit perspectives and incorporating critical anti-racist, equity-focused practices.

The inclusion of students with disabilities with special education services into general education classes has been an integral part of education for over 3 decades. It is a worldwide movement that continues to grow. Yet, some Special Education researchers remain highly critical, even cynical, of inclusion, despite decades of research that have refined school and classroom-based practices so that the majority of students with disabilities, with few exceptions, can achieve inclusion. In this paper we emphasize the importance of maintaining an optimistic focus on inclusive education by (1) foregrounding the thinking of activists within the Disability Rights Movement and more recent disability collectives that undergird theories of disability justice and inclusion; (2) centering intersectional experiences of disability; (3) clarifying the intentions of inclusion and dispelling some lingering myths; and (4) describing ways that inclusive classrooms can best serve students with mild to complex and multiple support needs. We conclude with a request to our field to reflect upon and consider Special Education's evolving role in ongoing collaborative development of inclusive education.

This paper explores the experiences of a doctoral disabled student at a university to examine how ableist structures in graduate programs affect access to higher education and post-degree outcomes. Guided by the DisCrit framework and autoethnography approach, the article illuminates systems and processes that disadvantage graduate disabled students. Through intersectional analyses of disability, race, and origin, the article makes visible manifestations of disability microaggressions and systemic ableism, racism, and xenophobia. It interrogates the perpetuation and normalization of academic transgressions, including exclusionary practices that degrade and oppress graduate disabled students and hinder them from seeking success. Finally, the argument is made in favour of reforms to authenticate disability culture, validate students’ rights to education, decolonize academics from ableism, and create a disability-friendly university environment.

Carol Rogers-Shaw’s rich memoir continues a fascinating tradition of autobiographical disability narratives that include works such as Stephen Kuusisto’s (1998) Planet of the Blind, Terry Galloway’s (2009) Mean, Little, Deaf Queer, Meri Nana-Ama Danquah’s (1998) Willow Weep for Me, and disability rights leader Judy Heumann’s (2020) Being Heumann. These exemplify what Garland-Thomson (2007) called “fresh and feisty disability narratives” (p. 119). Without apology, and often with great pride, these stories place the impaired and vulnerable body at the center of the plot structure. Through her own narrated experiences and by weaving in myriad encounters with her many disabled students, Rogers-Shaw skillfully recasts the stale tradition of tragedy-to-cure plots into full, authentic explorations of humans contending with precarity. The tales are deeply human, dealing with despair, hardship, connection, and joy. Her stories are truly a gift.

This paper explores introduction to special education textbooks in order to illuminate how they portray the social and political work of special educators, especially in relation to disabled students and adults. This study analyzed five leading special education textbooks used in university teacher education programs using traditional methods of discourse analysis, including line-by-line coding and language-in-use with valuation. The analysis and coding tracked story plot components and characters associated with five phases evident in the narrative structure of a hero's journey: (1) the call to adventure, (2) supernatural aid, (3) threshold guardians, (4) trials and tribulations, and (5) the return. Discussions of the findings illustrate the problematic ways in which the textbooks create a heroic narrative of past and current elements tied to the field of special education.

American government educational policy and leading advocacy groups commonly espouse independence as a primary goal for young people with intellectual disabilities. An extensive philosophical literature of autonomy has focused mostly on analyses of cognition that achieve individual self-governance. But the loosely defined concept of independence used by disability . policymakers and advocates provides a more malleable, social understanding that involves someone actively relying on the assistance of others. The purpose of this paper is to examine the cultural, historical origins of the notion of independence for disabled persons through an exploration of the biography of Ed Roberts, the father of the independent living movement, and the cultural context of Berkeley, California, in the 1960s and 1970s, where the movement began. The paper applies those cultural concepts to the life situations of persons with intellectual disabilities, asking how well independence serves as a useful goal for the group.

The documentary Crip Camp presents a 1970s summer camp for disabled youth as a place of friendship and political dialogues that spawned the American disability rights movement. The film also represented Camp Jened as a haven of racial harmony and inclusion. Jened was not the only American micro-community of disability solidarity and political possibilities that also involved questions of racial politics. Scholars have criticized disability activists and disability studies scholars for neglecting problems of racial oppression. This historical study examines three examples of empowering disability subcultures in twentieth century America: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Warm Springs rehabilitation resort from the mid-1920s through the mid-1940s, the Rolling Quads at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1960s, and Camp Interdependence in California in the 1980s. The article interrogates the racial politics of these egalitarian communities.

Ed Roberts was a renowned activist considered to be one of the founding leaders of the American disability rights movement. Although he engaged in numerous political strategies, his main form of activism was teaching in his prolific public speaking career across the United States and around the world. The content and methods of his pedagogy were crafted from his own personal experiences as a disabled man. His teaching featured autobiographic selections from his own life in which he fought and defeated forces of oppression and discrimination. This article examines Roberts’ disability rights teaching in relation to the experiential sources, political content, and teaching techniques.

In this article, we focus on the life and accomplishments of Ed Roberts, leader of the Independent Living Movement for people with severe disabilities, to consider ways he envisioned and enacted a radical shift in professional practices within the field of rehabilitation. Using the field of rehabilitation as an adult parallel to the field of Special Education, we invite readers to contemplate ways in which the independent living movement can hold potential lessons for how inclusive education is conceptualized and implemented, as well as offering some suggestions of our own.

This chapter examines diagnosis in three forms that occur roughly as temporal phases in everyday life: as a scientific construct; a social practice; and a political product. It explores more explicitly to the political and personal ramifications of stigmatised disability diagnoses by mining the writings of scholars who participated in a 2014 'Diagnosis Interrupted' conference at George Washington University, USA. The history of the scientific development of the learning disability diagnosis illustrates how a series of concepts and formulations used in different research programmes can be gathered and packaged together into a consensus-based disorder construct under the sway of social pressure. The chapter investigates how a diagnostic construct built by scientific researchers is translated into a useable diagnostic procedure leading to differential professional decisions. The possibility of overturning the hegemony of normal in order to perhaps compose a non-normative self was the theme of the 2014 'Diagnosis Interrupted' conference at George Washington University.

This article uses historical research methods to explore noted disability rights leader Ed Roberts' performances on the speaker circuit between 1983, when he left his position as director of the California Department of Rehabilitation, and his death in 1995. This article examines how he managed his performed identity, his self as presented on stage, in order to be a disability star. Using his own life story as a poignant example, he narrated an autobiography of how a paralyzed man could live a vigorous, successful, indeed a joyful life. His personal stories communicated his lived experiences of battling discrimination and stereotypes. Roberts skillfully and strategically marshalled his own growing celebrity as the most prominent disabled American while he promoted the cause of civil rights for disabled people.

University presses publish works of scholarly, intellectual, or creative merit tailored to an audience of specialists or a group with a shared interest. They also connect their host institution to local and regional communities and generate positive publicity for the institution. In recent years, however, university presses have faced increased scrutiny for myriad financial reasons. The purpose of this study was to measure the extrinsic and intrinsic value of one university press by gathering multiple sources of data on productivity, academic reach, and peer comparisons. Additionally, many of the press's recently published authors completed an anonymous online survey about their experiences, preferences, and satisfaction with aspects of the publishing process. Despite the press's recent financial struggles, the results of this study showed evidence of the press's benefits and value, and authors who responded to the survey reported high rates of satisfaction, personal and scholarly growth, and positive outcomes from their publishing experience. The methods of data gathering undertaken for this study may be instructive for others contemplating a similar evaluation of their press's value. Specifically, the survey described herein aimed to measure the value of the press in the view of one of its primary stakeholders - its authors - and similarly designed surveys could measure the value of the press in the view of other important stakeholders. Important implications for the press's practices and future avenues of research are discussed.

Background/Context: The current biographic understanding of John Dewey's experience adopting and raising an Italian boy named Sabino emphasizes the theme of finding an emotional replacement for Morris and Gordon, two young sons who had tragically died on family trips to Europe. Lacking is substantive attention to the fact that John Dewey's son had a physical disability who grew up during the early surge of eugenics thought in American popular life. The leading biographer Jay Martin has portrayed John and Alice Dewey as rescuing Sabino from poverty, an experience that gave John Dewey "a special empathy for the second-best, the second-class citizen, the loser in society." What is missing from all biographic research on the Deweys is their experience of raising a boy with a physical disability during a historical time when disabilities were highly stigmatized. Purpose/Objective/Research: The purpose of this historical study is to supplement the current understanding of John Dewey fathering an adopted son with an account that attends to the fact that young Sabino had a physical disability. Working in the disability studies tradition, this analysis explores both how the Deweys contended with Sabino's bone tuberculosis as an illness requiring medical treatment and how they navigated the complex political context of deeply discriminatory attitudes surrounding disabled persons. The conclusion initiates a discussion of the larger questions concerning how the experiences of fathering a boy impacted directly by disability oppression might have influenced John Dewey's political activity and scholarship. Research Design: This historical analysis utilizes prior biographic research, published and unpublished works by John Dewey, and primary historical documents such as family letters and medical and popular publications of the era. Conclusions/Recommendations: This analysis finds that John and Alice Dewey were very loving and attentive parents who endured many struggles due to their child's disability. They worried about their son's health, and they capably navigated the available medical options. They were troubled by their son's suffering and pain, and they worked together with great consistency to comfort and support him. Further, they directly confronted disability prejudice, including educational segregation, and worked assiduously against the powerful cultural assumption that their disabled son should lead a life of anything less than full participation in the community. The article concludes with a preliminary examination of how these experiences influenced John Dewey's political writings and activities.

Historical analyses of 1960s university campus activism have focused on activities related to the civil rights movement, Free Speech Movement, and opposition to the Vietnam War. This study supplements the historiography of civil disobedience and political activity on college campuses during that tumultuous era with an account of the initiation of the disability rights movement with the Rolling Quads, a group of disabled student activists at the University of California, Berkeley. This small group, with little political experience and limited connections to campus and community activists, organized to combat the paternalistic managerial practices of the university and the California Department of Rehabilitation. Drawing from the philosophy and strategies of the seething political culture of 1969 Berkeley, the Rolling Quads formed an activist cell that expanded within less than a decade into the most influential disability rights organization in the country.

Scholarship on inclusion is often disconnected from the lived experiences of those it intends to describe. Far too often discussions about the education of children with disabilities is informed by deficit perspectives. And much of the scholarship on children with disabilities has revolved around debates about competing, one-size-fits-all inclusion paradigms. Both these perspectives ignore the many promising inclusive classroom pedagogies and practices being used in classrooms today. Stories from real classrooms are drowned out or undervalued by larger scholarly discussions. What seems to get lost are the multiple ways teachers and teacher-educators are already implementing innovative inclusion practices.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of American students with disabilities educated in general classrooms with their nondisabled peers has risen by approximately 50%. This gradual but steady policy shift has been driven by two distinct narratives of organisational change. The social justice narrative espouses principles of equality and caring across human differences. The narrative of technocracy creates top-down, administrative pressure through hierarchical systems based on quantitative performance data. This article examines these two primary policy narratives of inclusive education in the USA, exploring the conceptual features of each and initiating an analysis of their application in the public schools.