This study tackles the question: how is literacy engagement enacted in the context of significant disability? We delve into the complex literacy practices of Kalika, a three-year-old child with Rett syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental disorder, to elucidate how she engages with printed text. Rett syndrome leads to near total loss of verbal…

Background: The experiences of students and professionals with disabilities are routinely excluded from scholarly and policy debates about equity in engineering. Emergent research suggests that engineering is particularly ableist, yet systematic accounts of the possible exclusion and devaluation faced by engineers with disabilities are largely…

Arts educators are rightly passionate about our work and its liberatory potential. However, we must also grapple with the ways in which ableism and racism circulate in arts education spaces, evading change and sustaining injustice. Through a fictionalized vignette, I explore how ableism and racism circulate in arts classrooms to co-construct…

Debates over curricula can be understood as struggles over the power to define symbolic representations of the world. Although this tension is particularly visible in discourse around textbook adoption, this is not the only site of contestation; other aspects of the classroom environment, such as the posters on the walls, also contain implicit…

Handicapped, special, or diverse? Segregated, mainstreamed, or included? The field of disability and difference within education, is vast and wide-ranging. This review of the literature highlights how, although we have come far in the last 40 years, there is still much to learn about effective inclusion of disabled children in early childhood…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that students receive a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE). Yet, research shows that middle school teachers do not feel prepared to work with students with special needs in the inclusive classroom (Mackey, 2014; Nagro et al., 2017;…

While primary and secondary teachers are legally required to adhere to inclusion guidelines for students experiencing disabilities, instructors in higher education have had more leeway to operate under a more traditional paradigm which can marginalize rather than include students in the classroom. Furthermore, students experience exclusion for…

The degree of homogeneity and heterogeneity among schools affects the comprehensiveness and inclusiveness of the school system and the type and scope of classroom interaction. Since the beginning of the 1980s, interest has gradually increased in the effects of homogeneity and heterogeneity of schools on classroom interactions; this research…

There is a great need for education and training about neurodiversity due to the rapid increase of neurodivergent students enrolling in postsecondary educational programs. As neurodivergent professionals, we offer a look at the common myths and misunderstandings that plague neurodivergent students as well as highlight the strengths neurodivergent…

A flexible seating classroom has different seating options for students to choose. Flexible seating affects the behavior of students with disabilities. Early elementary special education teachers do not have the strategies to manage the negative behavior of students. The special education teachers who were participants used flexible seating to…

Few research studies listened to the voices of high school students with disabilities' regarding their lived experiences during placement in an inclusion setting and a resource setting. The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to understand the central phenomenon of the study for 10 ninth grade students with disabilities served…

Children's judgments about inclusion and exclusion of children with disabilities were investigated in a Swiss sample of 6-, 9-, and 12-year-old children from inclusive and noninclusive classrooms (N = 422). Overall, the majority of children judged it as morally wrong to exclude children with disabilities. Yet, participants were less likely to…

The impact of trauma among young children is gaining attention. About one in four children experience potentially traumatic events before their third birthday. The rate of trauma among children with disabilities is unclear; however, evidence suggests that the rate of abuse and neglect is higher for individuals with disabilities than for those…

Pam Shanks describes Raintree Montessori School, an exemplary inclusion school, and gives credit to the legacy of Dr. Montessori. An inclusive Montessori community begins with "physical integration of all children, progresses to functional inclusion, and finally culminates in the highest level, social inclusion." Each of these levels is…

This report summarizes themes that emerged from six listening sessions held in April 2022 with Black and Latine Pre-K teachers, directors, and technical assistance providers. The purpose of the listening sessions was to understand participants' perceptions of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS-3) and to gauge the extent to which…