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In this paper, we engage with the question that frames this special issue: Can research help to deliver the promises of inclusive education? We argue that the answer is not so much a resounding and unquestionable “Yes!” but more of a “yes but…” it depends on what we consider and privilege as research evidence. Using the case of market-driven reforms and their impact on inclusive education for students with disabilities, we question the overemphasis on quantitative research as unbiased rationale for distributing economic and human resources, closing schools, and expanding private/public partnerships to deliver public education. We recommend that policy decision-making account for the history and geography of school districts and the intersectional forms of exclusion experienced by students and families, particularly those who experience interacting forms of oppression at the intersections of disability, race, and class.

Research on urban teacher education (UTE) programs have studied teacher candidates’ (TCs) perceptions of urban communities and schooling, but have provided limited insights on how ideologies about ...

Research on teaching students with disabilities has historically been dominated by behaviorist and cognitive theories that privilege the individual as the unit of analysis (Conway & Artiles, 2005)....

Informed by austerity politics, struggling school districts have closed buildings to pursue cost savings. We investigate the factors affecting which schools are shuttered, proposing that the share of students with an Individualized Education Program (SIEP) influences the way building utilization is measured because of the different instructional spaces required. We examine the case of elementary schools in Chicago, where 44 of 402 schools were closed in 2013. Simulating administrative decision-making parameters with a logistic regression model and demographic, student, and school data, we find that Chicago Public Schools was more likely to close school buildings with higher shares of SIEPs. Such punitive measures reflect the politics of austerity and disposability, leaving students with disabilities, particularly those in low-income neighborhoods of color, with fewer educational options.

El propósito del artículo es examinar los procesos de inclusión y exclusión para los estudiantes que viven formas interseccionales de exclusión. El documento se basará en una teoría crítica del espacio y el desarrollo urbano y en las teorías críticas de la discapacidad y raza para analizar las experiencias de estudiantes afroamericanos y latinos con discapacidades con reformas neoliberales en el distrito escolar de la Ciudad de Chicago. Si bien estas reformas educacionales han prometido ampliar las opciones educativas de calidad para las familias que de otra manera serían asignadas a escuelas de bajo rendimiento, también han generado nuevas formas de exclusión que afectan de manera única a los estudiantes afroamericanos y latinos con discapacidades. Nombrando esta paradoja de inclusión/exclusión como inclusionismo neoliberal, argumento a favor de una educación inclusiva interseccional.

Across the United States, the ‘no-excuses’ charter school movement featuring strict discipline policies and rigorous academic standards has gained popularity among schools serving poor and working-...

This study presents a longitudinal analysis of racial inequities evidenced in placement patterns in the least restrictive environment (LRE). We compared placement trends in neighborhoods and charter schools for Black and White students receiving special education services (SRSES). Drawing from the concept of institutional isomorphism and using a longitudinal analysis of odds ratio, we examined annual school data from 2008 to 2012 on students’ placement in the LRE in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Our findings indicate that over time charter schools mirror neighborhood schools’ (NS) racial inequities evidenced in access to general education classrooms.

Here Kathleen A. King Thorius and Federico R. Waitoller respond to Harvard Educational Review's Spring 2017 forum on their 2016 article “Cross-Pollinating Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Universal Design for Learning: Toward an Inclusive Pedagogy That Accounts for Dis/Ability.” The forum invited six scholars from the field of disability studies who have helped create and spread culturally sustaining pedagogy to discuss the opportunities and challenges of “cross-pollinating” these two approaches. The authors rejoin the conversation, clarifying and expanding on the forum's comments.

The purpose of this study is to compare and examine special education enrollment trends across disability categories and grade spans for public neighborhood and charter schools in the City of Chicago. Using multilevel longitudinal data analysis methods, we examined annual school enrollment and demographic reports. Our findings indicated that neighborhood schools serve significantly higher proportions of students receiving special education services (SRSE) than charter schools at the aggregate grade level (i.e., elementary and high school enrollments) and at each grade level. In addition, we found that charter schools enroll equal or significantly higher proportions of students with learning disabilities (LD), speech and language impairments (SLI), other health impairments (OHI), and emotional disturbance (ED), and substantially smaller proportions of students with autism, sensory impairments (SI), and intellectual disabilities (ID), when compared with neighborhood schools. However, we found that these differences vary between grade levels. We discuss the implications of these findings for policies affecting charter school authorization and contract renewal, and for policies establishing special education enrollment targets in charter schools.

In this article, we examine tensions that can materialize at the intersection of high-stakes accountability assessments and the rights of parents of students with dis/abilities. We bring to the surface and analyze the competing notions of social justice that have fueled the implementation of both high-stakes testing and the inclusion of students with dis/abilities in public schooling. Our purpose is to problematize narrow discussions about high-stakes testing and students with dis/abilities, contextualizing them in broader struggles for inclusive education. To achieve this task, we examine an event, framed as a case study, which emerged from a larger research project. Our analysis is informed by an understanding of inclusive education as situated practice in which historically evolving notions of justice are tangled and enacted to negotiate situated identities. We conclude with implications for practice and accountability models.

The purpose of the study was to answer the following questions: (a) What contradictions emerge in the context of a school/university partnership for inclusive education? And (b) How do resident teachers resolve these contradictions as they learned to be inclusive education teachers? Contradictions emerged as teacher residents were required to use in their classrooms pedagogical artifacts taught in the masters’ program that were in conflict with the school district’s curricular policies and mandated practices. We use the notion of curating to explain how resident teachers resolved contradictions in situated practice. We provide recommendations for research and teacher learning efforts for inclusive education.

In this article, Federico R. Waitoller and Kathleen A. King Thorius extend recent discussions on culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) in order to explicitly account for student dis/ability. The authors engage in this work as part of an inclusive education agenda. Toward this aim, they discuss how CSP and universal design for learning will benefit from cross-pollination and then conclude by suggesting interdisciplinary dialogue as a means to building emancipatory pedagogies that attend to intersecting markers of difference (e.g., dis/ability, class, gender, race, language, and ethnicity).

We examined how an inquiry group composed of a university professor, 3 doctoral students, and a grade-level team of 7th- and 8th-grade teachers negotiated their collaborative work. This effort resulted in the development of a 2-week unit that tapped into students’ out-of-school knowledge. Our research question asked how learning occurs within a boundary practice formed by university and middle school participants. We used analytical tools from Grounded Theory to analyze videos of meetings between university and school personnel, field notes, and meeting artifacts. Participants engaged in a dance in which boundaries among institutions and professions were sustained and challenged. The inquiry project became an open-ended learning zone in which all participants sought and gave support in joint action, expanding the mutual understandings of the object of their work. We recommend developing relational agency (Edwards, 2007) to engage in inquiry projects for inclusive education.

In this article, we provide commentary on the 'state of play' of inclusive education in the United States. We focus on the promises and limitations of inter-related accountability- and market-driven policies and Response to Intervention ( RTI) ( Vaughn and Fuchs, 2003). We argue that these policies and practice have 'hopscotched' their way through inclusive education reform, hopping over core tenets of the inclusive education movement. We propose policies and practices that have a strong commitment to inclusive education and that aim at debunking the myth of the normal child and school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents an activity theory analysis of how special educators learn about culturally responsive practices amidst school–university partnerships. Particular attention was paid to how culturally responsive pedagogy was privileged and appropriated by an in-service and a pre-service teacher in a boundary-zone activity. Findings demonstrate how culturally responsive pedagogy was appropriated in light of previous pedagogical artifacts that preexisted in the activity system of the classroom and as a result it became a covert form of instructionism

We reviewed the research on professional development (PD) for inclusive education between 2000 and 2009 to answer three questions: (a) How is inclusive education defined in PD research? (b) How is PD for inclusive education studied? (c) How is teacher learning examined in PD research for inclusive education? Systematic procedures were used to identify relevant research and analyze the target studies. We found that most PD research for inclusive education utilized a unitary approach toward difference and exclusion and that teacher learning for inclusive education is undertheorized. We recommend using an intersectional approach to understand difference and exclusion and examining boundary practices to examine teacher learning for inclusive education.

NOTICE: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Teaching and Teacher Education. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol 31, 2013 DOI:10.1016/j.tate.2012.11.006

The construct of culture has been largely invisible in the research and long-standing debates in the learning disabilities (LD) field, such as those pertaining to the definition of LD and how research knowledge is used in local settings. When used, the idea of culture tends to be defined as unrelated to LD and studied as restricted to individual/group traits. We challenge the culture–LD dichotomy and the limited conception of culture used in this knowledge base. For this purpose, we make the case for a cultural model of learning that can inform scholarship about the nature of LD, and we propose a culture-based model for the study of research knowledge use in professional practices. Moreover, we offer a third perspective on culture to study the strategies that the LD research community might be using to demarcate and maintain a cultureless paradigm of LD. Our discussion offers potentially rich opportunities for a culturally minded and reflexive stance in the LD field that is urgently needed in our increasingly diverse society.

In this article, we describe a model of teacher learning which is grounded in an apprenticeship approach to developing both practical knowledge and a critical understanding of the everyday practices that result in marginalisation. Beginning with an exploration of self and the lenses that teachers use to understand, assess and predict the performance of their students, apprentice teachers explore their practice from cultural perspectives. An intense focus on learning after the grounding in identity and culture braids psychological and social cultural perspectives to deepen teachers’ understanding of the learning process. The apprenticeship experience culminates in a final theme around assessment. To summarise, this teacher learning model is organised to prepare teachers who design learning environments that respond to the cultural histories, intellectual experiences and psychological characteristics of each learner.

The authors reviewed the overrepresentation research published between 1968 and 2006 to answer two questions: (a) What are the characteristics of overrepresentation studies? (b) How do studies frame the problem? Systematic procedures were used to search four international databases, and criteria were applied to identify relevant studies. Findings suggest that overrepresentation research has been mostly published in special education journals, the number of studies has increased over time (particularly since 2000), most overrepresentation research focused on the learning disabilities category and on African Americans, and most studies used quantitative designs. Overrepresentation research has been framed in three ways: a sociodemographic model in which characteristics of individuals and contexts are examined, a critical perspective in which power issues related to race are addressed, and a framework that examines the role of various professional practices in the creation and maintenance of overrepresentation . Implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed.