Disciplined to access the general education curriculum: Girls of color, disabilities, and specialized education programming

Abstract

As three teacher educators with familial ties to the Global South, but academically trained within the Global North, we adopt a de/colonial, intersectional feminist lens to analyze the “general education curriculum” in the United States. We use testimonios, each told in first-person, as entry points where we situate the entanglement of gendered, classed, linguistic, and racialized experiences with disabilities and the US academy. With an understanding that disability is not to be confused with special education identification, we examine the experiences of women and girls of Color with mental disabilities across institutions and educational spaces. The narratives move from lived experiences with bipolar disorder, to pedagogical practices employed within the US school context, to discussions about disabilities in teacher preparation programs. We offer these stories as collaborative sense-making of the general education curriculum and the westernized (i.e. colonial/white supremacist/ableist/patriarchal) ontoepistemology it reinforces. Transcending curricular approaches that are tolerant of disabilities and othered sociocultural identities, we propose an intersectional, de/colonial orientation that is humanizing along the axes of dis/ability, race, socioeconomic status (SES), class, language origin, ethnicity, religion, gender expression, sexuality, nationality, and citizenship. Such an orientation favours relationality and community over isolation and individualism, and de-centers normative curriculum in special education and specialized programming.

Keywords:

• Multicultural/diversity education
• teacher education
• gender issues in education
• multiple education environments
• curriculum studies
• disabilities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 All names in this testimonio have been changed to protect the identities of students.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mildred Boveda

Mildred Boveda is an Assistant Professor of Special Education and Cultural and Linguistic Diversity at Arizona State University. In her scholarship, she uses the term “intersectional competence” to describe teachers' preparedness to address intersecting equity concerns. Drawing from Black feminist theory and collaborative teacher education research, she interrogates how differences are framed across education communities to influence education policy and practice. Dr. Boveda earned an Ed.D. in Exceptional Student Education at Florida International University and an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management from Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Ganiva Reyes

Ganiva Reyes earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies in Education from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Miami University. Her research and teaching revolves around issues of social justice and culturally relevant teaching for pre-service teachers. She draws from intersectionality, Chicana feminist theory, and pedagogies of care to provide a nuanced approach to topics of diversity and inclusion in teacher education. Her other research interests include the educational experiences of Latina teen mothers and issues of gender and sexuality among Latinx youth.

Brittany Aronson

Brittany Aronson earned her PhD in 2014 in Learning Environments and Educational Studies from the University of Tennessee. She is currently working as an Assistant Professor in Sociocultural Foundations at Miami University and teaching classes in social foundations and the sociology of education. She was an elementary teacher for four years before returning to school to earn her doctorate. Her research interests include teacher preparation, social foundations of education, critical race and whiteness studies, and educational policy.