Social justice is an ambiguous and contested term that is evoked in order to address issues of enhancing participation and eliminating discrimination across various markers of difference linked to race, social class, and so on. Historically, disability has been excluded from these analyses because it has been cast in the sphere of abnormality and…

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…

One of the field's most enduring problems is the overrepresentation of students of color in special education. A less acknowledged challenge is the overrepresentation of students with disabilities in juvenile incarceration. Quantitative studies have documented the overrepresentation of students with disabilities in juvenile justice. Yet,…

Disability legislation demands inclusive institutional policy and practice to meet the needs of the growing numbers of students disclosing specific learning difficulties (SpLD)/dyslexia. However, surveys of provision indicate mixed levels of student satisfaction. Institutions need to be able to monitor the extent to which their practice embodies…

International tests of achievement narrowly measure specific academic subjects, but have larger educational policy implications. These tests come to summarize national education systems and are used in national and international discourse. However, students with disabilities are being entirely excluded from participation in the discourse of…

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability promotes equal and full participation by children in education. Equity of educational access for all students, including students with disability, free from discrimination, is the first-stated national goal of Australian education. Australian federal disability discrimination law, the…

In this article, we build on Brantlinger's work to critique the binary of normal and abnormal applied in US schools that create inequities in education. Operating from a critical perspective, we draw from Critical Race Theory, Disability Studies in Education, and Cultural/Historical Activity Theory to build a conceptual framework for…

Ellen Brantlinger's research and activism created opportunities for scholars who seek to locate and interrupt the social processes that shape educational inequities. In this essay, we reflect on Ellen's contributions by identifying three key "signposts"--lessons from Ellen's work that guided our own journeys and shaped the…

There are 130 ratifications by national governments around the world of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), adopted by the United Nations in December 2006. However, Japan has yet to ratify the CRPD. The author examined the social, political, and legal context in Japan, affecting the ratification of the CRPD and…

The "World Report on Disability" was requested by the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization (WHO). Because disability is broader than health, WHO partnered with the World Bank. The "World Report" was published in 2011 and provides a comprehensive scientific analysis on the global situation…

The concept of inclusion in the New Zealand legislative and policy environment is articulated in a liberal human rights discourse intended to redress past practices of segregation and exclusion. Such discourse has provided the early childhood sector with new ways to speak about disability and inclusion. There is, however, a growing body of…

Significant recent influences in the profession have provided clear direction about what school counseling programs should look like but have not explicitly defined the professional identity necessary to enact these programs. A Change-Agent-for-Equity (CAFE) Model draws from the American School Counselor Association National Model (2003, 2005,…

We propose that Disability Studies in Education (DSE) offers a framework that (a) grounds policy and practice in the experiences and perspectives of people with disabilities, (c) challenges practices/ policy that isolate, de-humanize individuals, and (c) leads to new questions to pose. In this session, we describe the pedagogy that we used to…

The Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) does the following: (1) Clarifies the relationship between bullying and discriminatory harassment under the civil rights laws enforced by the Department of Education's (ED) Office for Civil Rights (OCR); (2) Explains how student misconduct that falls under an anti-bullying policy also may trigger responsibilities…

In recent years, many state departments of education and local school districts have taken steps to reduce bullying in schools. The U.S. Department of Education (Department) fully supports these efforts. Bullying fosters a climate of fear and disrespect that can seriously impair the physical and psychological health of its victims and create…