Facilitating en/counters with special education’s cloak of benevolence in professional learning to eliminate racial disproportionality in special education

Abstract

Despite the U.S. government’s funding and provision of technical assistance as a prevailing approach to remedy special education racial disproportionality, and considerable research on the explanations, causes, and frameworks for addressing the phenomenon, there is little documentation of research or technical assistance efforts for actually doing so. As a white, non-disabled professor and executive director of a federally funded Equity Assistance Center, I theorize and offer for critique ways I have facilitated (mostly white, non-disabled) educators’ en/counters with culturally historically embedded systemic and individual practices contributing to the construction of special education as a cloak of benevolence for white supremacy and ableism. Drawing from a theory of expansive learning, I illustrate how purposeful introduction of artifacts into the activity system of a technical assistance relationship brings educators in contact with contradictions between their expressed goals of eliminating disproportionality and their pathologization of children’s differences at the intersection of race and disability.

Keywords:

• Special education racial disproportionality
• technical assistance
• cultural historical activity theory
• disability studies in education
• race

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Kathleen A. K. Thorius is an associate professor of special education in Indiana University's School of Education at IUPUI and executive director for the Great Lakes Equity Center and its Midwest and Plaines Equity Assistance Center, funded by the US Department of Education to address school desegregation in relation to race, gender, and national origin. Dr Thorius has a strong record of facilitating partnerships with state departments of education and school districts to create inclusive educational systems.