Challenging the ideology of normal in schools

Abstract

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 examining the prevailing ideology of normal found in US schools. We use our conceptual framework to deconstruct the current, westernised, static ideology of normal. Once deconstructed, we explore current iterations of the ideology of normal in schools. Finally, we suggest using the conceptual framework as a tool to reconstruct the ideology of normal as something more dynamic and inclusive.

Keywords:

• Critical Race Theory
• Cultural Historical Activity Theory
• Disability Studies
• normal

Notes on contributors

Subini A. Annamma is an assistant professor of Special Education at the Indiana University-Indianapolis. Before entering graduate school, she was a special education teacher working with culturally and linguistically diverse students with emotional, behavioural, and learning disabilities in public schools and juvenile justice. All of her work, in teaching and the academy, focuses on increasing access to equitable education for historically marginalised students and communities, particularly children identified with disabilities. Her research commitments emphasise an interdisciplinary approach using Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) that centres race and ability. Ultimately, Subini focuses on how student voice can identify exemplary educational practices.

Amy L. Boelé, MA, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in the Department of Educational Equity and Cultural Diversity. She is studying the intersections of disability, literacy, and discourse, as manifested in teacher–student interactions during small group reading instruction.

Brooke A. Moore, Ph.D., is a post-doctoral research assistant at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Prior to earning her doctorate, Brooke was a K-8 special education teacher for 12 years. Her research interests focus on revealing the ideology of normal in schools in order to make learning environments more encompassing of diversity. Recent publications include a chapter in the Handbook of Learning Disabilities, Second Edition, with Janette Klingner and Beth Harry that provides an overview of the qualitative learning disabilities (LD) research coming from the related fields of LD and disability studies.

Janette Klingner is a professor of bilingual special education at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She was a K-8 bilingual special education teacher for 10 years before earning a Ph.D. in Reading and Learning Disabilities from the University of Miami. Recent publications include ‘What does it take to scale up and sustain evidence-based practices?’ in Exceptional Children, with Alison Boardman and Kristen McMaster, and “Addressing the ‘research gap’ in special education through mixed methods,” in Learning Disability Quarterly, with Alison Boardman. In 2013, she received the Distinguished Researcher Award from the Special Education Research SIG at AERA.

Notes

1. Although our discussion of normal is grounded in westernised ideology, particularly as enacted in US education system, we recognise how normal can be conceptualised in other cultures. For example, Serpell, Mariga, and Harvey (1993) noted that intelligence in a Zambian community is often characterised by moral abilities rather than cognitive abilities. Congenital hip deformities among the Navajo are not always seen as a disability because they are accommodating for the individual in riding a horse (Locust 1988). And, at times, epilepsy in a Hmong community is not viewed as a disease or a handicap (Fadiman 1997). However, in each example a concept of normal continues to exist, though defined by different parameters.

2. Despite the negative assumptions embedded within the term ‘disability’, many disability rights activists have adopted the term, continuing its usage as a way to push society to recognise the stigma and implications associated with the term and to consider how those with disabilities are treated in society (Nocella 2008).

3. We have moved past some of this historical, overt discrimination through legislation such as the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), and court cases such as Diana vs. State Board of Education (1970) in which the court ruled that schools could not place a student in special education without testing in their native language. Yet inequities in society based on race still exist.

4. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, originally passed in 1990 and reinstated in 2004, is a US federal law that governs how states provide special education services to students with disabilities.