Who “Owns” Dis/ability? The Cultural Work of Critical Special Educators as Insider–Outsiders

Abstract

The article describes the work of critical special education scholars and teacher educators in the field of Disability Studies who challenge the fundamental assumptions on which special education is founded, illustrating implications for all educators. A brief history of the field acknowledges the enormity of the institutionalization of special education as a complex, multi-faceted, multi-layered establishment. The intellectual limits of that institution are described through the medicalized knowledge base that has arisen within special education, a base that gives rise to specific, restricted discourses of what constitutes a dis/ability and why. The author presents alternative sociocultural knowledge bases, as informed by Disability Studies and put forth by critical special educators, that broaden the understanding of dis/ability. Contrasting these theoretical groundings, implications for teacher dispositions toward differences among students are discussed, and ways in which a new perspective on dis/ability is related to the goals and practices of social education are identified.