Beth A. Ferri

Syracuse University | SU · Department of Teaching and Leadership

In this article, we combine aspects of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Disability Studies (DS) to propose a new theoretical framework that incorporates a dual analysis of race and ability: Dis/ability Critical Race Studies, or DisCrit. We first examine some connections between the interdependent constructions of race and dis/ability in education and...

a stunning set of authors, this book provokes outrage and possibility at the rich intersection of critical race, class, and disability studies, refracting back on educational policy and practices, inequities and exclusions but marking also spaces for solidarities. This volume is a must-read for preservice, and long-term educators, as the fault line...

In this article, we critically review the work of Morgan et al. (2015) and offer Disability Studies in Education (DSE) as an alternative conceptualization to traditional research within special education. We fi rst unpack many of Morgan et al.'s (2015) assumptions, which are grounded in defi cit discourses about children, family structures, economi...

The response to an uncontrolled spread of disease often incites a commingling of medical, moral, and political panic. Whether in the context of threats presented by early plagues, to contemporary super viruses, to lead toys, contagion, via transmission , makes interconnections visible, among and across peoples, cultures, objects, forms of commerce,...

Lack of access to general education for students with disabilities, particularly students with extensive support needs, students of color, and students from low-income households, reflects continued educational inequities for multiply marginalized students. Here, we present findings of a geospatial analysis of the intersections of race, socioeconom...

This article provides the introduction to a special issue of the Teachers College Record (TCR) “Imagining Possible Futures: Disability Critical Race Theory as a Lever for Praxis in Education”. We begin by revisiting the seven tenets of DisCrit and citing a truncated intellectual geneology. Next, we trace the importance of a TCR special issue recogn...

This article serves as the introduction to a special edition of the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Education (REE) dedicated to Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit). We begin by sharing the seven tenets of in DisCrit, acknowledging our indebtedness to scholars of color who originally developed theories of intersectionality. Next, we discuss w...

Using a DisCrit intersectional lens and statistical and spatial methods, we trace how the creation of K-8 schools functioned to create pockets of privilege in one urban U.S. school district. K-8 schools were both whiter and wealthier than district averages, serving as “enclave” schools. Although far fewer students with disabilities were served in K...

Middle grades education has been the object of efforts to remediate US education to address an array of social problems. Districts have sought out K-8 models to create smaller learning communities, require fewer school transitions, and allow sustained student connections. This paper offers a historical analysis of K-8 schools, drawing on statistica...

[In French] The disproportionate placement of students of color in special education has been a persistent problem in the U.S. and beyond. In this article, we trace the historical contexts, as well as contemporary trends associated with disproportionality. We then discuss ways that overrepresentation has relied upon problematic legacies of deficit...

In this review, we explore how intersectionality has been engaged with through the lens of disability critical race theory (DisCrit) to produce new knowledge. In this chapter, we (1) trace the intellectual lineage for developing DisCrit, (2) review the body of interdisciplinary scholarship incorporating DisCrit to date, and (3) propose the future t...

Background/Context In this paper we draw on an intersectional critical framework to analyze and account for the simultaneous interworkings of race and dis/ability. Specifically, we draw on this framework to examine two aims of modern science: (a) to identify distinct biological markers of race and (b) to locate biological and neurological origins o...

In this chapter, we examine a range of recent U.S. standards-based neoliberal educational reforms and their impact on students with disabilities, particularly in relation to inclusion. Although U.S. accountability measures included within standards-based reform (SBR) are generally credited with increased school district accountability for students...

The continuously evolving standards-based reform (SBR) movement is one of the most prominent features of today's educational policy landscape. As SBR has continued to drive educational policy, local schools and districts have adopted many approaches to comply with legal mandates. This article critically examines one particular resultant phenomenon...

In this commentary, the authors present disability studies in education (DSE) as an alternative way to reframe, understand, and teach students who are positioned as struggling in literacy classrooms. As the authors detail, a DSE perspective changes the relationship between teachers and students to a more reciprocal one, and in doing so, it relocate...

Rapidly institutionalized within educational policy and practice, Response to Intervention (RTI) is a multi-tier whole school approach to universal screening, targeted evidence-based intervening, and progress monitoring for students who are struggling to keep up with grade level or behavioral standards. Although RTI has quickly become institutional...

The continuously evolving standards‐based reform (SBR) movement is one of the most prominent features of today's educational policy landscape. As SBR has continued to drive educational policy, local schools and districts have adopted many approaches to comply with legal mandates. This paper critically examines one particular resultant phenomenon of...

Because of its long commitment to inclusive/integrated education, Italy leads the world in educating the largest percentage of its students with disabilities in gen- eral education classes. It also boasts the fewest special classes and schools. Inclusion in Italy is based on a principle that disability is not a problem, but rather a positive force...

The history of inclusive school policies and practices in both Italy and the United States suggest that inclusion is not something we achieve once and for all, but instead must continually be won. In this chapter I describe some of the challenges that both US and Italy have faced in enacting inclusive policies. I argue for the need to be mindful of...

Special education critics' vigorous appraisals of the social model of disability, along with their analysis of its implications for special education, provide a valuable forum for meaningful dialogue about how educators are to understand the nature of disability. In this article, we offer our response to their recent articles. As advocates of the s...

In this article we examine some of the omnipresent yet unacknowledged discourses of social and economic disadvantage and dis/ability within schools in the US. First, we document ways that social class, race, and dis/ability function within schools to further disadvantage and exclude already marginalized students. Next, we show how particular ways o...

It is estimated in the world today, that more than one billion people have a disability (World Health Organization, 2011). Many people with disabilities receive no education, and, of those who do, few receive an education on an equal basis with their non-disabled peers. In 2006, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons wit...

Brantlinger's [2004b. “Ideologies Discerned, Values Determined: Getting past the Hierarchies of Special Education.” In Ideology and the Politics of (in)Exclusion, edited by L. Ware, 11–31. New York: Peter Lang Publishing] critique of hierarchical ideologies lays bare the logics embedded in standards-based reform. Drawing on Brantlinger's insightful...

November 2013 "An outstanding contribution to the literature of both disability law and disability studies, effectively making connections between the two." Righting Educational Wrongs brings together the work of scholars from the fields of disability studies in education and law to examine contem-porary struggles around inclusion and access to edu...

In this chapter we trace some of the intersecting discourses of race and ability in US history and their impact upon schools. In particular, we focus upon on how the emergence of specialized forms of education served to shore up notions of competency and normalcy in times of increased diversity and social change. Through this retelling of special e...

The potential of technology to connect people and provide access to education, commerce, employment and entertainment has never been greater or more rapidly changing. Communication technologies and new media promise to ‘revolutionize our lives’ by breaking down barriers and expanding access for disabled people. Yet, it is also true that technology...

Background/Context Scholars in disability studies in education, like scholars in other critical fields of inquiry, increasingly draw on a more interdisciplinary range of texts in their research and teaching, including art, fiction, film, and autobiography. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The author asserts that contemporary disa...

The field of learning disabilities (LD) has a complex and complicated history. Tensions over definitions, eligibility criteria, service delivery models, and best practices, as well as epistemological debates, have been a part of that history from its inception. Given our collective struggles, as well as the current realities facing the field, there...

This article serves as an introduction to a special double issue of the Learning Disability Quarterly that seeks to engage the field in a respectful exchange about the need to expand research methodologies. In this article, we identify three interrelated concepts of interest to researchers in the field of learning disabilities (LD) - learning, disa...

Since its inception, the field of early childhood special education has been steeped in deficit model understandings of disability. From this vantage point, disability has been reduced to a set of problems or deficiencies inherent in individuals’ bodies. Entangled with problematic ideologies of racism and classism, disability labels soon became a t...

In this paper, I critically examine the discourse surrounding response to intervention (RTI), a US‐based education reform that has garnered a considerable amount of attention (as well as controversy) in a very short amount of time. A multi‐pronged reform effort, RTI is a tiered approach to delivering instructional intervention to students at risk,...

This article serves as an introduction to the special edition of Disability Studies Quarterly dedicated to revisiting Christine Sleeter’s germinal 1987 publication, “Why is There Learning Disabilities? A Critical Analysis of the Birth of the Field in Its Social Context.” In this introductory essay we first highlight the influence of Sleeter’s work...

Recent criticism of the over‐representation of minority students in special education do not adequately account for gender, despite the fact that urban special education classrooms in the USA are largely populated by young men of colour. In fact, we know very little about how being female shapes the experiences and understandings of young women of...

In its unwavering adherence to a pathology‐based model of disability, special education has foreclosed other ways of constructing meaning about disability. To challenge special education’s reductionist understandings of disability, scholars in disability studies in education are drawing on a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, i...

In the 30 years since the passage of the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (PL. 94–142) in 1975 (subsequently the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) special education in the USA as an institutionalized practice has become solidified. Over the years, however, the practice of segregating students because of disability has come under...

Reading Resistance confronts longstanding exclusionary practices in U.S. public schooling. Beth A. Ferri and David J. Connor trace the interconnected histories of race and disability in the public imagination through their nuanced analysis of editorial pages and other public discourses, including political cartoons and eugenics posters. By uncoveri...

This essay examines the ubiquitous use of ableist metaphors in contemporary feminist discourses and outlines two particular ways in which feminist theorists use disability to locate objects of remediation: first, the construction of disability in opposition to knowledge and second, the use of disability to highlight the subtle workings of power and...

In this first decade of the 21st century, we mark two milestones in education history: the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 2004, and the 30th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ( IDEA) in 2005. Both Brown and IDEA asserted the need for increased educational opportunities for once excluded...

In this article we explore the dynamic interplay between racism and ableism - or discrimination against someone based on perceived "ability"1-in the resistance to school desegregation and inclusion of students with disabilities in general education. In attending to the workings of power that connect these two histories, we show how racialized notio...

In this article we explore the dynamic interplay between racism and ableism—or discrimination against someone based on perceived “ability” ¹ —in the resistance to school desegregation and inclusion of students with disabilities in general education. In attending to the workings of power that connect these two histories, we show how racialized notio...

The purpose of this study is to examine how 4 teachers with learning disabilities (LD) negotiate multiple, complex, and sometimes contradictory discourses of disabilities in constructing their own understandings of LD. We chose to study teachers with LD because of their unique access to at least 3 different sources of knowledge about LD: (a) profes...

Reid and Valle (in this issue) illustrate how discourse within the field of learning disabilities (LD) determines what can and cannot be said and shapes what counts as knowledge or truth. Because basic assumptions about disability often remain unquestioned, Reid and Valle ask us to focus on the epistemological foundations of the field of LD. They d...

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The purpose of this qualitative multicase study was to explore the perceptions of individuals who could speak from both sides of the special education desk--as students and as teachers. The three participants for this study each received special education services for learning disabilities while in school and were currently teaching students with l...

This article discusses the outcomes of a study that investigated the experiences of 9 adult women living with a learning disability. It addresses the hidden costs associated with learning disabilities and explores a cyclic relationship discussed by the participants involving perfectionism, panic or anxiety, and exhaustion. (Contains references.) (A...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the similarities and differences across state agencies serving adolescents and adults with learning disabilities in relation to their definitions and eligibility criteria for services. Significant differences were noted within and across agencies. Specific emphasis was given to investigating the 51 state...

This paper analyses how disability informs and complicates gender identity for women with disabilities and demonstrates that disability is a feminist issue. The first section underscores the dual silence of women with disabilities who remain largely unheard of, both in feminist literature and in the disability rights movement. The status of women w...

The purpose of this study was to analyze the assessment profiles of two groups of adults with learning disabilities. The first group comprised 48 adults (34 men and 14 women) demonstrating giftedness and a learning disability profile (G/LD). The second group of 46 adults (31 men and 15 women) demonstrated a learning disabled profile without giftedn...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Georgia, 1997. Directed by Noel Gregg and Judith Preissle. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-202).