Teaching Disabled Youth at the Intersections of Race, Ethnicity and Language: Best Practices for Student Success

Abstract

In the United States success and best practices in education and, specifically in special education, have been constructed through a dominant, westernized epistemology that has and continues to privilege white, English-speaking, able-bodied individuals. In this chapter, we, two non-disabled Latina teacher preparation scholar-practitioners, begin by troubling the words success and best practices and their understandings for disabled youth at the intersections of race, ethnicity, and language as well as other marginalized identities. Through a critical and synthesizing review of the research literature, this chapter investigates the overarching question, “How have student success and best practices in special education been conceptualized and how are these understandings evolving in light of teaching disabled youth with multiple intersecting identities?” Using an inductive and deductive approach to data analysis, findings suggest that traditional understandings of student success and best practices focus on where the disabled student is positioned in relation to their peers and more critical understandings center on who the disabled student is and ways to support and advocate for them. Through a synthesis of findings, the authors propose two new definitions of student success and best practices. These definitions have implications for practice as they represent a pedagogical shift in the ways educators assess and evaluate disabled youth.