Born in the UK, I am an educator, writer, and artist who lives in New York City. Address: Department of Special Education (Professor Emeritus) Hunter College 695 Park Ave New York, NY 10065
Embracing Diversity is about the craft of teaching, with a focus on celebrating the myriad of hum... more Embracing Diversity is about the craft of teaching, with a focus on celebrating the myriad of human identities through classic, contemporary, and unconventional texts. In the book, experienced secondary English language arts educators explore complex issues raised by a diverse body of writers, while simultaneously sharing methods that engage students to think critically.
This edited volume foregrounds Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) as an intersectional fra... more This edited volume foregrounds Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) as an intersectional framework that has informed scholarly analyses of racism and ableism from the personal to the global--offering important interventions into theory, practice, policy, and research. (It was originally published as a special issue of the journal of Race Ethnicity and Education).
Who hasn’t wondered about the lives of fellow passengers on a flight? This collection of short st... more Who hasn’t wondered about the lives of fellow passengers on a flight? This collection of short stories takes readers on a journey through the intimate thoughts of twenty-four strangers, coming to know their lives and loves, hopes and realities, fortunes and fears, all in real-time—from boarding at Heathrow to clearing customs at JFK.
This sequel to the influential 2016 work DisCrit—Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in E... more This sequel to the influential 2016 work DisCrit—Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education explores how DisCrit has both deepened and expanded, providing increasingly nuanced understandings about how racism and ableism circulate across geographic borders, academic disciplines, multiplicative identities, intersecting oppressions, and individual and cultural resistances. Following an incisive introduction by DisCrit intellectual forerunner Alfredo Artiles, a diverse group of authors engage in inward, outward, and margin-to-margin analyses that raise deep and enduring questions about how we as scholars and teachers account for and counteract the collusive nature of oppressions faced by multiply minoritized individuals with disabilities, particularly in educational contexts. Contributors ask us to consider incisive questions, such as, what are the affordances and constraints of DisCrit as it travels outside of US contexts? How can DisCrit, as a critical and intersectional framework, be used to support and extend diverse forms of activism, expanded solidarities, and collective resistance? How can DisCrit inform and be augmented by engagements with other critical theories and modes of inquiry? How can DisCrit help to illuminate agency and resistance among learners with complex learning needs? How might DisCrit inform legal studies and other disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts? How can DisCrit be a critical friend to interrogations involving issues of citizenship, language, and more?
Book Features:
• Expands the discussion on DisCrit to include issues of language, citizenship, and post-secondary education, and more.
• Presents a robust engagement with DisCrit that reaches across disciplines, geographies, and temporalities.
• Highlights the lived experience of people with disabilities as knowledge generators fighting against the collusive power of racism and ableism.
• Recognizes that disability is complex, multifaceted and not bound by labels for Black people, Indigenous People, and other People of Color in educational experiences and throughout the lifespan
• Further explores the discussion on DisCrit while encouraging disability scholars to substantially integrate racism into their analyses, and for race scholars to do the same with ableism.
The trilogy is an exploration of how people make sense of love and loss in their lives. It is set... more The trilogy is an exploration of how people make sense of love and loss in their lives. It is set in New York City, a microcosm of the world, with an astounding range of human diversity found throughout its five boroughs. The characters in these tales reflect that diversity, mirroring our commonalities in their strengths and frailties, desires and fears, hopes and struggles. In this particular volume readers encounter a charming gambler who makes wrong decisions, a lonely widow remembering her long deceased spouse, a teenager’s addiction that impacts is entire family, and an immigrant taxi driver yearning for the distant homeland of his youth. It is my own hope that the people in these stories can serve as a prism for us all to reflect upon what makes us who we are
This book purposefully connects practice to research, and vice versa, through the use of deeply p... more This book purposefully connects practice to research, and vice versa, through the use of deeply personal stories in the form of autoethnographic memoirs. In this collection, twenty contributors share selected tales of teaching students with dis/abilities in K-12 settings across the USA, including tentative triumphs, frustrating failures, and a deep desire to understand the dynamics of teaching and learning.The authors also share an early awareness of significant dissonance between academic knowledge taught to them in teacher education programs and their own experiential knowledge in schools. Coming to question established practices within the field of special education in relation to the children they taught, each author grew increasingly critical of deficit-models of disability that emphasized commonplace practices of physical and social exclusion, dysfunction and disorders, repetitive remediation and punitive punishments. The authors describe how their interactions with children and youth, parents, and administrators, in the context of their classrooms and schools, influenced a shift away from the limiting discourse of special education and toward becoming critical special educators and/or engaging with disability studies as a way to reclaim, reframe, and reimagine disability as a natural part of human diversity. Furthermore, the authors document how these early experiences in the everydayness of schooling helped ground them as teachers and later, teacher educators, who galvanized their research trajectories around studying issues of access and equality throughout educational structures and systems, while developing new theoretical models within Disability Studies in Education, aimed to impact practices and policies.
This volume is the second in a trilogy featuring fifty-two interconnected short stories of New Yo... more This volume is the second in a trilogy featuring fifty-two interconnected short stories of New Yorkers. The number of tales was chosen for two reasons. First, it reflects the weeks in a year, signifying the predictable circularity of time. Second, it symbolizes a deck of playing cards, representing unpredictable situations that involve luck—both good and bad—requiring choices to be made about the hand that’s dealt. The trilogy is an exploration of how people make sense of love and loss in their lives. It is set in New York City, a microcosm of the world, with an astounding range of human diversity found throughout its five boroughs. The characters in these tales reflect that diversity, mirroring our commonalities in their strengths and frailties, desires and fears, hopes and struggles.
This volume is the first in a trilogy featuring fifty-two interconnected short stories of New Yor... more This volume is the first in a trilogy featuring fifty-two interconnected short stories of New Yorkers. The number of tales was chosen for two reasons. First, it reflects the weeks in a year, signifying the predictable circularity of time. Second, it symbolizes a deck of playing cards, representing unpredictable situations that involve luck—both good and bad—requiring choices to be made about the hand that’s dealt.
When contemplating what it means to be human, one of the things uniting us all is our experiences with love and loss. Not merely limited to a romantic sense, although admittedly, that is an important part of our world. Rather, we know there are many kinds of love we feel—for family members, friends, Gods, pets, idols, places…the list goes on. We also know everything that can be loved, can also be lost—to time, to chance, to change, to death. When this happens, we may experience great distress, disequilibrium in our lives, even disillusionment. And yet we move forward. We keep breathing. The losses fold into ourselves, becoming a part of who we are. We learn from them. And we keep loving.
This trilogy is an exploration of how people make sense of love and loss in their lives. It is set in New York City, a microcosm of the world, with an astounding range of human diversity found throughout its five boroughs. The characters in these tales reflect that diversity, mirroring our commonalities in their strengths and frailties, desires and fears, hopes and struggles. It is my own hope that the people in these stories can serve as a prism for us all to reflect upon what makes us who we are.
Now in its second edition, Rethinking Disability introduces new and experienced teachers to ethic... more Now in its second edition, Rethinking Disability introduces new and experienced teachers to ethical framings of disability and strategies for effectively teaching and including students with disabilities in the general education classroom. Grounded in a disability studies framework, this text’s unique narrative style encourages readers to examine their beliefs about disability and the influence of historical and cultural meanings of disability upon their work as teachers. The second edition offers clear and applicable suggestions for creating dynamic and inclusive classroom cultures, getting to know students, selecting appropriate instructional and assessment strategies, co-teaching, and promoting an inclusive school culture. This second edition is fully revised and updated to include a brief history of disability through the ages, the relevance of current educational policies to inclusion, technology in the inclusive classroom, intersectionality and its influence upon inclusive practices, working with families, and issues of transition from school to the post-school world. Each chapter now also includes a featured "voice from the field" written by persons with disabilities, parents, and teachers.
it turns out, the story of the unfolding relationship between special education and disability st... more it turns out, the story of the unfolding relationship between special education and disability studies in the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. With clarity and humor, as well as love and gratitude for his students and colleagues over the years, Connor weaves his memoir with honesty, compassion, and a keen intelligence. Contemplating Dis/Ability in Schools and Society will be treasured by teachers, professors, and others committed to making public education more humane and just for all students, their teachers, and society more broadly. " —SONIA NIETO, University of Massachusetts " In this autoethnographic memoir, Connor intimately reflects on thirty years as a (special) educator. Organizing the memoir around his career trajectory, he compellingly narrates a series of personal and professional experiences beginning with his life as a new teacher, and later as a doctoral student, college professor, and finally, department chairperson. Throughout the book, Connor acknowledges the tensions and conflicted feelings shared by many of us whose scholarly work is situated in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) but whose faculty and teaching responsibilities reside in special education programs. David J. Connor is a prolific writer and compelling scholar whose contributions to education, and DSE in particular, are significant due to the breadth of topics studied and the depth of scrutiny and analysis applied to each project. " —SUSAN L. GABEL, Wayne State University This book chronicles the professional life of a career-long, inclusive educator in New York City through eight different stages in special and general education. Developing a new approach to research as part of qualitative methodology, David J. Connor merges the academic genre of autoethnography with memoir to create a narrative that engages the reader through stories of personal experiences within the professional world that politicized him as an educator. After each chapter's narrative, a systematic analytic commentary follows that focuses on: teaching and learning in schools and universities; the influence of educational laws; specific models of disability and how influence educators and educational researchers; and educational structures and systems—including their impact on social, political, and cultural experiences of people with disabilities. This autoethnographic memoir documents, over three decades, the relationship between special and general education, the growth of the inclusion movement, and the challenge of special education as a discrete academic field. As part of a national group of critical special educators, Connor describes the growth of counter-theory through the inception and subsequent growth of DSE as a viable academic field, and the importance of rethinking human differences in new ways. DAVID J. CONNOR is professor of special education/learning disabilities at Hunter College.
This book is a true story of one family’s journey into inclusive education. Having previously bee... more This book is a true story of one family’s journey into inclusive education. Having previously been told that her son Benny had "failed to function" in two exclusionary special education classrooms in New York City, Berman’s family set off in search of a school where Benny would be accepted for who he was, while having the opportunity to grow and flourish academically, socially, and emotionally alongside his brother, Adam. Connor’s interest was piqued when Berman shared her desire to document the ways in which the new school community had supported Benny throughout the years. Together, they thought, surely other teachers, school and district level administrators, parents of children with and without disabilities, teacher educators, and student teachers, could learn from such a success story? The result of their collaboration is this book in which Berman skillfully narrates episodes across time, describing ways in which children, teachers, educational assistants, parents, and a principal came to know Benny―developing numerous and often creative ways to include him in their classrooms, school, and community. Connor’s commentaries after each chapter link practice to theory, revealing ways in which much of what the school community seems to "do naturally" is, in fact, highly compatible with a Disability Studies in Education (DSE) approach to inclusive education. By illuminating multiple approaches that have worked to include Benny, the authors invite educators and families to envision further possibilities within their own contexts."
This groundbreaking volume brings together major figures in Disability Studies in Education (DSE)... more This groundbreaking volume brings together major figures in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore some of today’s most important issues in education. Scholars examine the achievement/opportunity gaps from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as the overrepresentation of minority students in special education and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapters also address school reform and the impact on students based on race, class, and dis/ability and the capacity of law and policy to include (and exclude). Readers will discover how some students are included (and excluded) within schools and society, why some citizens are afforded expanded (or limited) opportunities in life, and who moves up in the world and who is trapped at the “bottom of the well.”
Practicing Disability Studies in Education: Acting Toward Social Change celebrates the diversity ... more Practicing Disability Studies in Education: Acting Toward Social Change celebrates the diversity of contemporary work being developed by a range of scholars working within the field of Disability Studies in Education (DSE). The central idea of this volume is to share ways in which educators practice DSE in creative and eclectic ways in order to rethink, reframe, and reshape the current educational response to disability. Largely confined to the limitations of traditional educational discourse, this collective (and growing) group continues to push limits, break molds, assert the need for plurality, explore possibilities, move into the unknown, take chances, strategize to destabilize, and co-create new visions for what can be, instead of settling for what is. Much like jazz musicians who rely upon one another on stage to create music collectively, these featured scholars have been—and continue to—riff with one another in creating the growing body of DSE literature. In sum, this volume is DSE “at work.”
Synopsis
Urban Narratives foregrounds previously silenced voices of young people of color who ar... more Synopsis
Urban Narratives foregrounds previously silenced voices of young people of color who are labeled disabled. Overrepresented in special education classes, yet underrepresented in educational research, these students—the largest group within segregated special education classes—share their perceptions of the world and their place within it. Eight 'portraits in progress' consisting of their own words and framed by their poetry and drawings, reveal compelling insights about life inside and out of the American urban education system. The book uses an intersectional analysis to examine how power circulates in society throughout and among historical, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal domains, impacting social, academic, and economic opportunities for individuals, and expanding or circumscribing their worlds.
Synopsis
Reading Resistance confronts longstanding exclusionary practices in U.S. public school... more Synopsis
Reading Resistance confronts longstanding exclusionary practices in U.S. public schooling. Beth A. Ferri and David J. Connor trace the interconnected histories of race and disability in the public imagination through their nuanced analysis of editorial pages and other public discourses, including political cartoons and eugenics posters. By uncovering how the concept of disability was used to resegregate students of color after the historic Brown decision, the authors argue that special education has played a role in undermining school desegregation. In its critical, interdisciplinary focus on the interlocking politics of race and disability, Reading Resistance offers contributions to educational research, theory, and policy.
TCR has played a vial role in the development of DsE, helping establish a
formalized field of stu... more TCR has played a vial role in the development of DsE, helping establish a formalized field of study that continues to grow and develop. ln this brief commentary we attempt to capture the scope and broad thematics of DSE scholarship in TCR from foundational articles to more recent works as DSE continues to expand particularly in terms of interdisciplinary and intersectional commitments.
Embracing Diversity is about the craft of teaching, with a focus on celebrating the myriad of hum... more Embracing Diversity is about the craft of teaching, with a focus on celebrating the myriad of human identities through classic, contemporary, and unconventional texts. In the book, experienced secondary English language arts educators explore complex issues raised by a diverse body of writers, while simultaneously sharing methods that engage students to think critically.
This edited volume foregrounds Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) as an intersectional fra... more This edited volume foregrounds Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) as an intersectional framework that has informed scholarly analyses of racism and ableism from the personal to the global--offering important interventions into theory, practice, policy, and research. (It was originally published as a special issue of the journal of Race Ethnicity and Education).
Who hasn’t wondered about the lives of fellow passengers on a flight? This collection of short st... more Who hasn’t wondered about the lives of fellow passengers on a flight? This collection of short stories takes readers on a journey through the intimate thoughts of twenty-four strangers, coming to know their lives and loves, hopes and realities, fortunes and fears, all in real-time—from boarding at Heathrow to clearing customs at JFK.
This sequel to the influential 2016 work DisCrit—Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in E... more This sequel to the influential 2016 work DisCrit—Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education explores how DisCrit has both deepened and expanded, providing increasingly nuanced understandings about how racism and ableism circulate across geographic borders, academic disciplines, multiplicative identities, intersecting oppressions, and individual and cultural resistances. Following an incisive introduction by DisCrit intellectual forerunner Alfredo Artiles, a diverse group of authors engage in inward, outward, and margin-to-margin analyses that raise deep and enduring questions about how we as scholars and teachers account for and counteract the collusive nature of oppressions faced by multiply minoritized individuals with disabilities, particularly in educational contexts. Contributors ask us to consider incisive questions, such as, what are the affordances and constraints of DisCrit as it travels outside of US contexts? How can DisCrit, as a critical and intersectional framework, be used to support and extend diverse forms of activism, expanded solidarities, and collective resistance? How can DisCrit inform and be augmented by engagements with other critical theories and modes of inquiry? How can DisCrit help to illuminate agency and resistance among learners with complex learning needs? How might DisCrit inform legal studies and other disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts? How can DisCrit be a critical friend to interrogations involving issues of citizenship, language, and more?
Book Features:
• Expands the discussion on DisCrit to include issues of language, citizenship, and post-secondary education, and more.
• Presents a robust engagement with DisCrit that reaches across disciplines, geographies, and temporalities.
• Highlights the lived experience of people with disabilities as knowledge generators fighting against the collusive power of racism and ableism.
• Recognizes that disability is complex, multifaceted and not bound by labels for Black people, Indigenous People, and other People of Color in educational experiences and throughout the lifespan
• Further explores the discussion on DisCrit while encouraging disability scholars to substantially integrate racism into their analyses, and for race scholars to do the same with ableism.
The trilogy is an exploration of how people make sense of love and loss in their lives. It is set... more The trilogy is an exploration of how people make sense of love and loss in their lives. It is set in New York City, a microcosm of the world, with an astounding range of human diversity found throughout its five boroughs. The characters in these tales reflect that diversity, mirroring our commonalities in their strengths and frailties, desires and fears, hopes and struggles. In this particular volume readers encounter a charming gambler who makes wrong decisions, a lonely widow remembering her long deceased spouse, a teenager’s addiction that impacts is entire family, and an immigrant taxi driver yearning for the distant homeland of his youth. It is my own hope that the people in these stories can serve as a prism for us all to reflect upon what makes us who we are
This book purposefully connects practice to research, and vice versa, through the use of deeply p... more This book purposefully connects practice to research, and vice versa, through the use of deeply personal stories in the form of autoethnographic memoirs. In this collection, twenty contributors share selected tales of teaching students with dis/abilities in K-12 settings across the USA, including tentative triumphs, frustrating failures, and a deep desire to understand the dynamics of teaching and learning.The authors also share an early awareness of significant dissonance between academic knowledge taught to them in teacher education programs and their own experiential knowledge in schools. Coming to question established practices within the field of special education in relation to the children they taught, each author grew increasingly critical of deficit-models of disability that emphasized commonplace practices of physical and social exclusion, dysfunction and disorders, repetitive remediation and punitive punishments. The authors describe how their interactions with children and youth, parents, and administrators, in the context of their classrooms and schools, influenced a shift away from the limiting discourse of special education and toward becoming critical special educators and/or engaging with disability studies as a way to reclaim, reframe, and reimagine disability as a natural part of human diversity. Furthermore, the authors document how these early experiences in the everydayness of schooling helped ground them as teachers and later, teacher educators, who galvanized their research trajectories around studying issues of access and equality throughout educational structures and systems, while developing new theoretical models within Disability Studies in Education, aimed to impact practices and policies.
This volume is the second in a trilogy featuring fifty-two interconnected short stories of New Yo... more This volume is the second in a trilogy featuring fifty-two interconnected short stories of New Yorkers. The number of tales was chosen for two reasons. First, it reflects the weeks in a year, signifying the predictable circularity of time. Second, it symbolizes a deck of playing cards, representing unpredictable situations that involve luck—both good and bad—requiring choices to be made about the hand that’s dealt. The trilogy is an exploration of how people make sense of love and loss in their lives. It is set in New York City, a microcosm of the world, with an astounding range of human diversity found throughout its five boroughs. The characters in these tales reflect that diversity, mirroring our commonalities in their strengths and frailties, desires and fears, hopes and struggles.
This volume is the first in a trilogy featuring fifty-two interconnected short stories of New Yor... more This volume is the first in a trilogy featuring fifty-two interconnected short stories of New Yorkers. The number of tales was chosen for two reasons. First, it reflects the weeks in a year, signifying the predictable circularity of time. Second, it symbolizes a deck of playing cards, representing unpredictable situations that involve luck—both good and bad—requiring choices to be made about the hand that’s dealt.
When contemplating what it means to be human, one of the things uniting us all is our experiences with love and loss. Not merely limited to a romantic sense, although admittedly, that is an important part of our world. Rather, we know there are many kinds of love we feel—for family members, friends, Gods, pets, idols, places…the list goes on. We also know everything that can be loved, can also be lost—to time, to chance, to change, to death. When this happens, we may experience great distress, disequilibrium in our lives, even disillusionment. And yet we move forward. We keep breathing. The losses fold into ourselves, becoming a part of who we are. We learn from them. And we keep loving.
This trilogy is an exploration of how people make sense of love and loss in their lives. It is set in New York City, a microcosm of the world, with an astounding range of human diversity found throughout its five boroughs. The characters in these tales reflect that diversity, mirroring our commonalities in their strengths and frailties, desires and fears, hopes and struggles. It is my own hope that the people in these stories can serve as a prism for us all to reflect upon what makes us who we are.
Now in its second edition, Rethinking Disability introduces new and experienced teachers to ethic... more Now in its second edition, Rethinking Disability introduces new and experienced teachers to ethical framings of disability and strategies for effectively teaching and including students with disabilities in the general education classroom. Grounded in a disability studies framework, this text’s unique narrative style encourages readers to examine their beliefs about disability and the influence of historical and cultural meanings of disability upon their work as teachers. The second edition offers clear and applicable suggestions for creating dynamic and inclusive classroom cultures, getting to know students, selecting appropriate instructional and assessment strategies, co-teaching, and promoting an inclusive school culture. This second edition is fully revised and updated to include a brief history of disability through the ages, the relevance of current educational policies to inclusion, technology in the inclusive classroom, intersectionality and its influence upon inclusive practices, working with families, and issues of transition from school to the post-school world. Each chapter now also includes a featured "voice from the field" written by persons with disabilities, parents, and teachers.
it turns out, the story of the unfolding relationship between special education and disability st... more it turns out, the story of the unfolding relationship between special education and disability studies in the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. With clarity and humor, as well as love and gratitude for his students and colleagues over the years, Connor weaves his memoir with honesty, compassion, and a keen intelligence. Contemplating Dis/Ability in Schools and Society will be treasured by teachers, professors, and others committed to making public education more humane and just for all students, their teachers, and society more broadly. " —SONIA NIETO, University of Massachusetts " In this autoethnographic memoir, Connor intimately reflects on thirty years as a (special) educator. Organizing the memoir around his career trajectory, he compellingly narrates a series of personal and professional experiences beginning with his life as a new teacher, and later as a doctoral student, college professor, and finally, department chairperson. Throughout the book, Connor acknowledges the tensions and conflicted feelings shared by many of us whose scholarly work is situated in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) but whose faculty and teaching responsibilities reside in special education programs. David J. Connor is a prolific writer and compelling scholar whose contributions to education, and DSE in particular, are significant due to the breadth of topics studied and the depth of scrutiny and analysis applied to each project. " —SUSAN L. GABEL, Wayne State University This book chronicles the professional life of a career-long, inclusive educator in New York City through eight different stages in special and general education. Developing a new approach to research as part of qualitative methodology, David J. Connor merges the academic genre of autoethnography with memoir to create a narrative that engages the reader through stories of personal experiences within the professional world that politicized him as an educator. After each chapter's narrative, a systematic analytic commentary follows that focuses on: teaching and learning in schools and universities; the influence of educational laws; specific models of disability and how influence educators and educational researchers; and educational structures and systems—including their impact on social, political, and cultural experiences of people with disabilities. This autoethnographic memoir documents, over three decades, the relationship between special and general education, the growth of the inclusion movement, and the challenge of special education as a discrete academic field. As part of a national group of critical special educators, Connor describes the growth of counter-theory through the inception and subsequent growth of DSE as a viable academic field, and the importance of rethinking human differences in new ways. DAVID J. CONNOR is professor of special education/learning disabilities at Hunter College.
This book is a true story of one family’s journey into inclusive education. Having previously bee... more This book is a true story of one family’s journey into inclusive education. Having previously been told that her son Benny had "failed to function" in two exclusionary special education classrooms in New York City, Berman’s family set off in search of a school where Benny would be accepted for who he was, while having the opportunity to grow and flourish academically, socially, and emotionally alongside his brother, Adam. Connor’s interest was piqued when Berman shared her desire to document the ways in which the new school community had supported Benny throughout the years. Together, they thought, surely other teachers, school and district level administrators, parents of children with and without disabilities, teacher educators, and student teachers, could learn from such a success story? The result of their collaboration is this book in which Berman skillfully narrates episodes across time, describing ways in which children, teachers, educational assistants, parents, and a principal came to know Benny―developing numerous and often creative ways to include him in their classrooms, school, and community. Connor’s commentaries after each chapter link practice to theory, revealing ways in which much of what the school community seems to "do naturally" is, in fact, highly compatible with a Disability Studies in Education (DSE) approach to inclusive education. By illuminating multiple approaches that have worked to include Benny, the authors invite educators and families to envision further possibilities within their own contexts."
This groundbreaking volume brings together major figures in Disability Studies in Education (DSE)... more This groundbreaking volume brings together major figures in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore some of today’s most important issues in education. Scholars examine the achievement/opportunity gaps from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as the overrepresentation of minority students in special education and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapters also address school reform and the impact on students based on race, class, and dis/ability and the capacity of law and policy to include (and exclude). Readers will discover how some students are included (and excluded) within schools and society, why some citizens are afforded expanded (or limited) opportunities in life, and who moves up in the world and who is trapped at the “bottom of the well.”
Practicing Disability Studies in Education: Acting Toward Social Change celebrates the diversity ... more Practicing Disability Studies in Education: Acting Toward Social Change celebrates the diversity of contemporary work being developed by a range of scholars working within the field of Disability Studies in Education (DSE). The central idea of this volume is to share ways in which educators practice DSE in creative and eclectic ways in order to rethink, reframe, and reshape the current educational response to disability. Largely confined to the limitations of traditional educational discourse, this collective (and growing) group continues to push limits, break molds, assert the need for plurality, explore possibilities, move into the unknown, take chances, strategize to destabilize, and co-create new visions for what can be, instead of settling for what is. Much like jazz musicians who rely upon one another on stage to create music collectively, these featured scholars have been—and continue to—riff with one another in creating the growing body of DSE literature. In sum, this volume is DSE “at work.”
Synopsis
Urban Narratives foregrounds previously silenced voices of young people of color who ar... more Synopsis
Urban Narratives foregrounds previously silenced voices of young people of color who are labeled disabled. Overrepresented in special education classes, yet underrepresented in educational research, these students—the largest group within segregated special education classes—share their perceptions of the world and their place within it. Eight 'portraits in progress' consisting of their own words and framed by their poetry and drawings, reveal compelling insights about life inside and out of the American urban education system. The book uses an intersectional analysis to examine how power circulates in society throughout and among historical, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal domains, impacting social, academic, and economic opportunities for individuals, and expanding or circumscribing their worlds.
Synopsis
Reading Resistance confronts longstanding exclusionary practices in U.S. public school... more Synopsis
Reading Resistance confronts longstanding exclusionary practices in U.S. public schooling. Beth A. Ferri and David J. Connor trace the interconnected histories of race and disability in the public imagination through their nuanced analysis of editorial pages and other public discourses, including political cartoons and eugenics posters. By uncovering how the concept of disability was used to resegregate students of color after the historic Brown decision, the authors argue that special education has played a role in undermining school desegregation. In its critical, interdisciplinary focus on the interlocking politics of race and disability, Reading Resistance offers contributions to educational research, theory, and policy.
TCR has played a vial role in the development of DsE, helping establish a
formalized field of stu... more TCR has played a vial role in the development of DsE, helping establish a formalized field of study that continues to grow and develop. ln this brief commentary we attempt to capture the scope and broad thematics of DSE scholarship in TCR from foundational articles to more recent works as DSE continues to expand particularly in terms of interdisciplinary and intersectional commitments.
In D. Hernandez-Saca, H. Pearson, & K. Voulgarides (Eds.) (pp. 11-30). Understanding the boundaries between Disabilities Studies and Special Education through consilience, self-study, and radical love. Lexington Press., 2023
Afterword in "(M)othering Labeled Children: Bilingualism and Disability in the Lives of Latinx Mo... more Afterword in "(M)othering Labeled Children: Bilingualism and Disability in the Lives of Latinx Mothers" by Maria Cioe-Pena.
In this article I advocate using Disability Studies in Education as a discipline to inform work a... more In this article I advocate using Disability Studies in Education as a discipline to inform work about inclusive education. Second, I discuss teacher (1) dispositions (beliefs and responsibilities) about human diff erences; (2) skills in pedagogical fl exibility; and, (3) ability to collaborate with others, as the critical areas necessary for creating and maintaining inclusive classrooms. Th ird, I pose questions to serve as a springboard for further discussions about inclusive education regarding teacher educators' responsibilities to preservice and in-service teachers.
The field of Special Education has long been recognized for its overwhelmingly negative conceptua... more The field of Special Education has long been recognized for its overwhelmingly negative conceptualizations of disability, largely deficit based and located within medicalized, psychological, and often pseudo-scientific discourses. As a critical special educator and Disability Studies in Education (DSE) oriented teacher educator, I sought to reimagine “The Study of Learning Disabilities in Children and Adolescents,” a course that was historically taught in ways that privileged traditional special education world views of LD. In this article I use personal narrative to describe rewriting this cornerstone course in the Learning Disabilities (LD) teacher education program. First, I assert the need to teach a plurality of perspectives about disability. Second, I share some of the main new resources, justifying my choices. Third, I present a selective outline of the course, describing the contents of several sessions, foregrounding resources and activities, for the reader to gain a sense of particular topics and issues. Fourth, I reflect upon the rationale for my choices and process of (in)fusing DSE into a traditional special education course. Finally, I close with several thoughts designed to promote a conversation within our Disability Studies (DS) community, particularly within teacher education programs, about reimagining and revising existing courses to have DS/DSE-informed frameworks.
What can be learned about the pandemic through the lens of disability, and conversely, what can w... more What can be learned about the pandemic through the lens of disability, and conversely, what can we come to know about disability through the COVID-19 pandemic? Rogers- Shaw contemplates these reciprocal questions in a highly original essay that is wide in scope. After thinking about how to best describe the experience of reading her work, the word “wondrous” came to mind, as the essay is both delightful and powerful. Why? Because she examines and explores what has recently concerned many of us in education, that is, the pandemic’s impact upon the lives of both teachers and students with and without disabilities. We have heard all kinds of stories in social media (Selwyn, 2020), along with formal reports (Barbour, 2021) and journal articles on the crest of an anticipated wave of information (Osofsky et al., 2020). Still, we don’t yet have a cohesive, substantial body of knowledge that makes sense of the pandemic’s ongoing impact on education in the United States and around the world.... [1st Paragraph of Commentary]
In this review, we explore how intersectionality has been engaged with through the lens of disabi... more In this review, we explore how intersectionality has been engaged with through the lens of disability critical race theory (DisCrit) to produce new knowledge. In this chapter, we (1) trace the intellectual lineage for developing DisCrit, (2) review the body of interdisciplinary scholarship incorporating DisCrit to date, and (3) propose the future trajectories of DisCrit, noting challenges and tensions that have arisen. Providing new opportunities to investigate how patterns of oppression uniquely intersect to target students at the margins of Whiteness and ability, DisCrit has been taken up by scholars to expose and dismantle entrenched inequities in education.
This article serves as the introduction to a special edition of the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, a... more This article serves as the introduction to a special edition of the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Education (REE) dedicated to Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit). We begin by sharing the seven tenets of in DisCrit, acknowledging our indebtedness to scholars of color who originally developed theories of intersectionality. Next, we discuss ways in which, from its original publication in REE (2013), DisCrit has gained traction as a theoretical tool that is increasingly used in research and practice. Then, we briefly summarize and comment upon the eight featured articles in this special edition. Each article has been purposefully selected to reflect a broad scope of interestsfrom empirical research to theoretical papers seeking changes within schools, communities, teacher education programs, research practices, and global connections. All contributions are from the USA as a way to consider ways in which DisCrit is being utilized in one country, while encouraging further intra-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and global conversations.
In this article I use personal narrative to provide a commentary on the value of Disability Studi... more In this article I use personal narrative to provide a commentary on the value of Disability Studies in Education (DSE). Through a mixture of recollections, observations, and descriptions, along with engagement with scholarship in the fields of both special education and DSE, I highlight ways in which I and other scholars have utilized the latter in our daily professional practices. First, I describe the point in my educational career when I came into contact with Disability Studies (DS). Second, I share the beginnings of how DSE came into existence through the work of a coalition of critical special educators. Third, I provide instances of DSE in action, highlighting a recent in-service presentation and other examples. Fourth, I explain why DSE is needed to protect and develop conceptualizations of disability outside of the traditional special education realm. Fifth, I illustrate the benefits of DSE’s interdisciplinary nature. Finally, I assert that DSE provides a visionary lens for improving educational practices for students with disabilities. In closing, I advocate for DSE’s continued growth in helping change deficit-based understandings of disability that continue to pervade education and society.
In U. Sharma (Ed.), Inclusive and Special Education. New York: Oxford University Press., 2020
The concept of inclusive education has historically divided the field of special education into t... more The concept of inclusive education has historically divided the field of special education into those who valued specialized practices in exclusive or segregated settings, and those who sought to forge new versions of general education classrooms in which all students could be included. Ideological disputes about what human differences constitute disabilities undergird two very distinct positions that are known as medical and social models of disability. The positions significantly impact how inclusive education is envisioned and enacted, with proponents of each model holding fast to what they believe is “best” for students. It is precisely because of disagreements about what constitutes special education—and in particular its relationship toward inclusive education—that we see value in comparing and contrasting medical and social models of disability. In doing so we build upon previous publications of scholars who have analyzed differences between medical and social perspectives of special education. Moreover, we extend these analyses to focus upon inclusive practices in particular, including the impact of how medical and social models impacts each educators’ disposition about how inclusion is conceptualized, enacted, and assessed. For the purpose of this analysis we focus upon the following areas: (1) the concept of disability and “appropriate” placement; (2) the purpose of schools; (3) the nature of teaching learning; (4) a teacher’s role; (5) the notion of student success and failure; and, (6) perceptions of social justice and disability. Within each area we offer a medical and social model perspective before discussing implications for inclusive education. Finally, we describe how, when taken together, these interconnected and sometimes overlapping areas convey how medicalized or sociocultural models of inclusive education can vary dramatically, depending upon a teacher’s general ideological disposition toward disability or difference. [initial draft of published paper]
In this article, we focus on the life and accomplishments of Ed Roberts, leader of the Independen... more In this article, we focus on the life and accomplishments of Ed Roberts, leader of the Independent Living Movement for people with severe dis- abilities, to consider ways he envisioned and enacted a radical shift in professional practices within the field of rehabilitation. Using the field of rehabilitation as an adult parallel to the field of Special Education, we invite readers to contemplate ways in which the independent living movement can hold potential lessons for how inclusive education is conceptualized and implemented, as well as offering some suggestions of our own.
Learning Disabilities: A Multi Disciplinary Journal, 2020
This study is framed by Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to examine the interaction between studen... more This study is framed by Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to examine the interaction between student perceptions of school personnel efforts and actions and the development of student intrinsic motivation and self-determination. This mixed-methods study examines variations among high school students' (n = 44) level of self-determination (SD) and the relationship between their perspectives of school support of autonomy, competence, and relatedness and self-determination development. We share student profiles (N = 6) based upon deductive coding of student interviews. Findings focus on the centering of students' own words to create data-rich renderings of individual students located within their school context. Each student profile contains connections to the three domains associated with SDT: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We provide a discussion of the applicability of SDT for school practitioners to inform increased support for students with learning disabilities.
Little evidence exists about how students with Learning disabilities (LD) recognize, understand, ... more Little evidence exists about how students with Learning disabilities (LD) recognize, understand, and utilize existing supports to ensure successful graduation from high school. In this article we ask: What are the supports available to high school students with LD that help them graduate? (a) What/who are some school-based supports they identify? (b) What/who are some non-school supports they identify? We share data from semi-structured interviews with forty high school students. Findings reveal: teacher support in the form of pedagogical choices, individualized support, and after-school support; counseling expertise in the form of academic advisement and emotional support; effective family-school collaboration; discrete family support outside of school; and various forms of self sustenance. Implications
Annamma, S. A., Ferri, B. A, & Connor, D. J. (2018). Cultivating and expanding DisCrit (Disability Critical Race Theory). In R. Garland Thomson, K. Ellis, M. Kent, & R. Robertson. (Eds.) Manifestos for the future of critical disability studies (pp. 230-238). New York: Routledge., 2018
Disability as a form of human diversity? Imagine that! While those of us researching and writing ... more Disability as a form of human diversity? Imagine that! While those of us researching and writing within disability studies take this idea for granted, it can appear radical to others in the academy whose understanding of diversity is primarily grounded in race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and so on, with disability conceived as primarily within the purview of medicine, science, and psychology. Of course, as has been argued for some time now, conceptualizing identities as unidimensional is reductionist, limited, essentialist, and therefore not quite as accurate as once thought. Well aware of this dilemma, editors Kim and Aquino contextualize disability through the lens of intersectionality, integral to student identity and diversity writ large, with view to illustrating ways in which institutions of higher education can expand their incorporation, and support, of students with disabilities. The editors also point out that disability has largely been understood as a potential limitation for college success, with much of the discourse being shaped by deficit-based framings of disability. To counter this point, their purposeful intersectional focus addresses "the current disconnect between perceptions of disability and student diversity in higher education, and (re)establishes the ground for how disability is and should be interpreted within the postsecondary environment" (p. xii-xiii). Along with descriptive
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Book Features:
• Expands the discussion on DisCrit to include issues of language, citizenship, and post-secondary education, and more.
• Presents a robust engagement with DisCrit that reaches across disciplines, geographies, and temporalities.
• Highlights the lived experience of people with disabilities as knowledge generators fighting against the collusive power of racism and ableism.
• Recognizes that disability is complex, multifaceted and not bound by labels for Black people, Indigenous People, and other People of Color in educational experiences and throughout the lifespan
• Further explores the discussion on DisCrit while encouraging disability scholars to substantially integrate racism into their analyses, and for race scholars to do the same with ableism.
Paperback version:
https://www.amazon.com/Just-Keep-Breathing-Tales-Love/dp/B091WFG925/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=david+j.+connor&qid=1618001225&s=books&sr=1-1
Kindle version:
https://www.amazon.com/Just-Keep-Breathing-Tales-Love-ebook/dp/B0921T8C8Q/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=david+j.+connor&qid=1618001455&s=books&sr=1-2
When contemplating what it means to be human, one of the things uniting us all is our experiences with love and loss. Not merely limited to a romantic sense, although admittedly, that is an important part of our world. Rather, we know there are many kinds of love we feel—for family members, friends, Gods, pets, idols, places…the list goes on. We also know everything that can be loved, can also be lost—to time, to chance, to change, to death. When this happens, we may experience great distress, disequilibrium in our lives, even disillusionment. And yet we move forward. We keep breathing. The losses fold into ourselves, becoming a part of who we are. We learn from them. And we keep loving.
This trilogy is an exploration of how people make sense of love and loss in their lives. It is set in New York City, a microcosm of the world, with an astounding range of human diversity found throughout its five boroughs. The characters in these tales reflect that diversity, mirroring our commonalities in their strengths and frailties, desires and fears, hopes and struggles. It is my own hope that the people in these stories can serve as a prism for us all to reflect upon what makes us who we are.
The result of their collaboration is this book in which Berman skillfully narrates episodes across time, describing ways in which children, teachers, educational assistants, parents, and a principal came to know Benny―developing numerous and often creative ways to include him in their classrooms, school, and community. Connor’s commentaries after each chapter link practice to theory, revealing ways in which much of what the school community seems to "do naturally" is, in fact, highly compatible with a Disability Studies in Education (DSE) approach to inclusive education. By illuminating multiple approaches that have worked to include Benny, the authors invite educators and families to envision further possibilities within their own contexts."
Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore some of today’s most important issues in education. Scholars
examine the achievement/opportunity gaps from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as
the overrepresentation of minority students in special education and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapters
also address school reform and the impact on students based on race, class, and dis/ability and the
capacity of law and policy to include (and exclude). Readers will discover how some students are included
(and excluded) within schools and society, why some citizens are afforded expanded (or limited)
opportunities in life, and who moves up in the world and who is trapped at the “bottom of the well.”
Urban Narratives foregrounds previously silenced voices of young people of color who are labeled disabled. Overrepresented in special education classes, yet underrepresented in educational research, these students—the largest group within segregated special education classes—share their perceptions of the world and their place within it. Eight 'portraits in progress' consisting of their own words and framed by their poetry and drawings, reveal compelling insights about life inside and out of the American urban education system. The book uses an intersectional analysis to examine how power circulates in society throughout and among historical, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal domains, impacting social, academic, and economic opportunities for individuals, and expanding or circumscribing their worlds.
Reading Resistance confronts longstanding exclusionary practices in U.S. public schooling. Beth A. Ferri and David J. Connor trace the interconnected histories of race and disability in the public imagination through their nuanced analysis of editorial pages and other public discourses, including political cartoons and eugenics posters. By uncovering how the concept of disability was used to resegregate students of color after the historic Brown decision, the authors argue that special education has played a role in undermining school desegregation. In its critical, interdisciplinary focus on the interlocking politics of race and disability, Reading Resistance offers contributions to educational research, theory, and policy.
formalized field of study that continues to grow and develop. ln this brief commentary we attempt to capture the scope and broad thematics of DSE scholarship in TCR from foundational articles to more recent works as DSE continues to expand particularly in terms of interdisciplinary and intersectional commitments.
Book Features:
• Expands the discussion on DisCrit to include issues of language, citizenship, and post-secondary education, and more.
• Presents a robust engagement with DisCrit that reaches across disciplines, geographies, and temporalities.
• Highlights the lived experience of people with disabilities as knowledge generators fighting against the collusive power of racism and ableism.
• Recognizes that disability is complex, multifaceted and not bound by labels for Black people, Indigenous People, and other People of Color in educational experiences and throughout the lifespan
• Further explores the discussion on DisCrit while encouraging disability scholars to substantially integrate racism into their analyses, and for race scholars to do the same with ableism.
Paperback version:
https://www.amazon.com/Just-Keep-Breathing-Tales-Love/dp/B091WFG925/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=david+j.+connor&qid=1618001225&s=books&sr=1-1
Kindle version:
https://www.amazon.com/Just-Keep-Breathing-Tales-Love-ebook/dp/B0921T8C8Q/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=david+j.+connor&qid=1618001455&s=books&sr=1-2
When contemplating what it means to be human, one of the things uniting us all is our experiences with love and loss. Not merely limited to a romantic sense, although admittedly, that is an important part of our world. Rather, we know there are many kinds of love we feel—for family members, friends, Gods, pets, idols, places…the list goes on. We also know everything that can be loved, can also be lost—to time, to chance, to change, to death. When this happens, we may experience great distress, disequilibrium in our lives, even disillusionment. And yet we move forward. We keep breathing. The losses fold into ourselves, becoming a part of who we are. We learn from them. And we keep loving.
This trilogy is an exploration of how people make sense of love and loss in their lives. It is set in New York City, a microcosm of the world, with an astounding range of human diversity found throughout its five boroughs. The characters in these tales reflect that diversity, mirroring our commonalities in their strengths and frailties, desires and fears, hopes and struggles. It is my own hope that the people in these stories can serve as a prism for us all to reflect upon what makes us who we are.
The result of their collaboration is this book in which Berman skillfully narrates episodes across time, describing ways in which children, teachers, educational assistants, parents, and a principal came to know Benny―developing numerous and often creative ways to include him in their classrooms, school, and community. Connor’s commentaries after each chapter link practice to theory, revealing ways in which much of what the school community seems to "do naturally" is, in fact, highly compatible with a Disability Studies in Education (DSE) approach to inclusive education. By illuminating multiple approaches that have worked to include Benny, the authors invite educators and families to envision further possibilities within their own contexts."
Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore some of today’s most important issues in education. Scholars
examine the achievement/opportunity gaps from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as
the overrepresentation of minority students in special education and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapters
also address school reform and the impact on students based on race, class, and dis/ability and the
capacity of law and policy to include (and exclude). Readers will discover how some students are included
(and excluded) within schools and society, why some citizens are afforded expanded (or limited)
opportunities in life, and who moves up in the world and who is trapped at the “bottom of the well.”
Urban Narratives foregrounds previously silenced voices of young people of color who are labeled disabled. Overrepresented in special education classes, yet underrepresented in educational research, these students—the largest group within segregated special education classes—share their perceptions of the world and their place within it. Eight 'portraits in progress' consisting of their own words and framed by their poetry and drawings, reveal compelling insights about life inside and out of the American urban education system. The book uses an intersectional analysis to examine how power circulates in society throughout and among historical, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal domains, impacting social, academic, and economic opportunities for individuals, and expanding or circumscribing their worlds.
Reading Resistance confronts longstanding exclusionary practices in U.S. public schooling. Beth A. Ferri and David J. Connor trace the interconnected histories of race and disability in the public imagination through their nuanced analysis of editorial pages and other public discourses, including political cartoons and eugenics posters. By uncovering how the concept of disability was used to resegregate students of color after the historic Brown decision, the authors argue that special education has played a role in undermining school desegregation. In its critical, interdisciplinary focus on the interlocking politics of race and disability, Reading Resistance offers contributions to educational research, theory, and policy.
formalized field of study that continues to grow and develop. ln this brief commentary we attempt to capture the scope and broad thematics of DSE scholarship in TCR from foundational articles to more recent works as DSE continues to expand particularly in terms of interdisciplinary and intersectional commitments.
Why? Because she examines and explores what has recently concerned many of us in education, that is, the pandemic’s impact upon the lives of both teachers and students with and without disabilities. We have heard all kinds of stories in social media (Selwyn, 2020), along with formal reports (Barbour, 2021) and journal articles on the crest of an anticipated wave of information (Osofsky et al., 2020). Still, we don’t yet have a cohesive, substantial body of knowledge that makes sense of the pandemic’s ongoing impact on education in the United States and around the world.... [1st Paragraph of Commentary]
significantly impact how inclusive education is envisioned and enacted, with proponents of each model holding fast to what they believe is “best” for students. It is precisely because of disagreements about what constitutes special education—and in particular its relationship toward inclusive education—that we see value in comparing and contrasting medical and social models of disability.
In doing so we build upon previous publications of scholars who have analyzed differences between medical and social perspectives of special education. Moreover, we extend these analyses to focus upon inclusive practices in particular, including the impact of how medical and social models impacts each educators’ disposition about how inclusion is conceptualized, enacted, and assessed. For the purpose of this analysis we focus upon the following areas: (1) the concept of disability and “appropriate” placement; (2) the purpose of schools; (3) the nature of teaching learning; (4) a teacher’s role; (5) the notion of student success and failure; and, (6) perceptions of social justice and disability. Within each area we offer a medical and social model perspective before discussing implications for inclusive education. Finally, we describe how, when taken together, these interconnected and sometimes overlapping areas convey how medicalized or sociocultural models of inclusive education can vary dramatically, depending upon a teacher’s general ideological disposition toward disability or difference. [initial draft of published paper]