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This study clarifies the development process of inclusive education in England (London) with Disability Equality Training (DET) for non-disabled teachers and pupils. It focuses on the practices of graduates of special schools who are members of the Integration Alliance (IA), an organization of disabled people. The shift in education policy from segregation to integration in the 1970s and 1980s influenced the development of the inclusion movement among people with disabilities and their parents, some of whom joined the IA and have been campaigning together since the 1990s to end the segregation of children with disabilities. IA members provided DET to non-disabled teachers and pupils in mainstream schools to change their attitudes and practices towards inclusion. The training was delivered during Disability History Month or across the curriculum in each subject area. The training covered the history of discrimination, the concept of the 'social model' of disability, and the role of 'allies'. Through DET, non-disabled teachers and pupils were encouraged to raise awareness of issues of exclusion and to work together for inclusion. It is also found that inclusive education movements with non-disabled allies have been developed since the 1990s. Under the Labour government, the campaign grew and education policy shifted towards inclusive education. However, the current situation has deteriorated, and the IA's successor is still practicing DET in mainstream schools, as inclusive education requires the cooperation of non-disabled allies and the reform of mainstream schools. This paper concludes that raising non-disabled allies through DET and campaigning together was important in achieving inclusive education. It shows, in comparison to previous research, that DET has played an important role in the process of making allies for inclusive education.

Tensions exist between providing inclusive education in mainstream classrooms and market-driven neoliberal values such as academic success and school ranking. These values impinge on teachers' responsibilities to teach students with disabilities. Schools are ranked based on students' performance in national examinations and schools sometimes use unscrupulous methods to achieve good results. In a culture that ranks schools based on test results, the schools themselves find it hard to embrace the idea of inclusion and some will use a variety of means to exclude students with disabilities to maintain their high rating. In this article we explore how some key tenets of neoliberalism in inclusive education, such as testing mechanisms to leverage accountability and improvement, inter-school competition, marketisation of education and parental choice, among others, affect the provision of education to students with disabilities in Kenya. We highlight how neoliberalism has affected inclusive education in Kenya and explain how hegemonic neoliberal culture has changed the way schools operate and how teachers teach. We also show how neoliberal culture in schools helps exclude students who are different from the norm.

College students with disabilities continue to experience various challenges in their transition into postsecondary education. However, limited research has focused on their initial transition, despite the significance of its impact on college students with disabilities. This qualitative study examined first-semester transition experiences among freshmen with disabilities at a public research university in the Southeastern United States. Responses (i.e., post-course interviews, course reflections, online discussion boards) from thirteen students of 2018 to 2021 cohorts of the Engage 100 course (an orientation program for freshmen with disabilities) were analyzed through a qualitative analysis approach. The results indicated that college freshmen benefit in their social and academic transition through enrolling in the Engage 100 course. The results highlight the need for disability support services and for college campuses to foster transition success for college students with disabilities.

The phenomenon of microaggressions is well established within the counseling literature, particularly as it relates to race, ethnicity, gender, and affectual orientation. However, research related to disability or ableist microaggressions is still in its infancy, so counseling professionals have limited information about experiences of disability and ableist microaggressions. The purpose of this qualitative content analysis was to describe participants' self-reported experiences with ableist microaggressions. Participants (N = 90) had a diagnosed disability and the majority (91.11%) identified as having two or more nondominant identities beyond their disability. We report two categories and 10 themes. While participants were part of the general population, we position our discussion and implications within the context of professional counseling to increase counseling professionals' awareness and knowledge so counselors can avoid ableist microaggressions and provide affirmative counseling services to persons with disabilities.

Artificial intelligence can support increasingly complex conversational interactions and also has the potential to interpret meanings from free text input and make recommendations based on patterns in data. There are important opportunities to apply this to real-world problems faced in access to education. In this paper, we summarise existing research and trends linking disability support and technology, then report on a survey conducted with students with disclosed disabilities (n = 138) to explore what systems might need to do to effectively understand disabled students in their own words, and provide suggestions of technologies, strategies and resources that could be relevant to overcoming barriers to learning. Through thematic analysis, five approaches that students used to talk about their disabilities are identified(medical, functional, support, experiential and administrative), and three major types of suggestions they make around what supported them and may be useful to others are also identified (external tools, university support and practices, concerns and solutions). The survey approach and the findings of the analysis provide a potential foundation for the effective design of systems that could crowdsource a knowledgebase around disabilities, hold conversations to understand disabilities and barriers and make relevant recommendations to individuals as to how they could overcome these barriers.

The study examined the use of Assistive Technologies (AT) among pupils with hearing and visual impairment in selected primary schools in Zanzibar. The study involved 127 respondents. Data was collected using questionnaires, focus group discussions, and observation. Findings indicated that primary schools in Zanzibar had access to hearing aids, sign language interpreters, braille, and speech recognition software. However, the utilization of these technologies posed challenges for most pupils. While pupils with impairments perceived the positive impact of assistive technologies in learning and performance, they encountered several obstacles, including shortage of devices, insufficient training for both teachers and pupils, lack of qualified teachers for instructing pupils in their use, communication issues with hearing-impaired pupils, negative attitudes toward Assistive Technology, and inadequate quality of available devices. The study recommends that the government allocate substantial funds for the procurement and maintenance of assistive technologies and establish support systems and resource centers to enhance effective utilization of assistive technologies in primary schools. This will ultimately promote inclusivity and improve educational experiences of pupils with hearing and visual impairments in Zanzibar.

Microaggressions are commonplace overt and covert forms of discrimination that convey disparaging messages to individuals who hold marginalized identities, including people with disabilities (PWD). Although PWD are a prevalent nondominant identity group in the United States, little is known about the occurrence of ableist microaggressions in this culturally diverse community, including how ableist microaggressions are experienced based on disability characteristics and other nondominant identities. A sample consisting of 201 PWD completed an electronic survey that examined the occurrence of ableist microaggressions based on visibility of disability, type of disability, and nondominant sociocultural identities. We found that PWD have a moderate level of lifetime occurrences with ableist microaggressions, the visibility of disability impacts the occurrence of ableist microaggressions and the types of ableist microaggressions experienced, and sociocultural identities may predict minimization types of ableist microaggressions.

Persistent ableism in higher education, counseling practice, and society necessitates disability justice advocacy. In this article, the author explores the historical context of disability and the importance of disability knowledge for counselors and counselor educators. In addition to discrimination and inaccessibility, able privilege and lack of representation present significant barriers to equity and empowerment of disabled people. Better awareness of disability culture and community-oriented frameworks for the collective liberation of disabled people, such as disability justice, can improve disability equity and allyship within counseling and counselor education.

Educators in Belize are charged with ensuring that all Belizeans are given an opportunity to acquire a quality education that promotes personal development and productive citizenship. Consequently, Belizean law now requires all children from ages five through fourteen to attend at least eight years of primary school. Students with special needs have historically not received accommodations in the education system, so many teachers struggle with meeting the needs of students with learning disabilities in these inclusive settings. This qualitative case study explored teaching strategies and contextual factors in inclusive primary classrooms in Belize and was conducted in the form of Community Engaged Research in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Youth, Sports, and Culture (MOE). Findings suggest consistent approaches for differentiating instruction, teacher passion for teaching and commitment to meeting student needs, a need for additional resources and training, and a disconnect between families and schools. Interpretation of these findings through Hornby's (2015) theory of inclusive education suggests that Belize is primarily following inclusivity as students with disabilities are integrated into the mainstream educational system. However, while some principles and practices of inclusion are followed, other features are absent. Adding a special education component could enhance student learning as individualization and standardization of instruction, expectations, and assessment could occur between teachers, across grade levels, and in communication with families. A special education component with associated teacher training could support teacher desire for additional resources and meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population of students.

This article aims to highlight the importance of teachers training about inclusiveness by relying on statistical differences in teachers' perceptions of who are trained in the last five years and those who are not, in the realm of inclusive education as regards the socialization of SEN children with their class peers. The approach of this study was quantitative, and sample extraction is carried out through the stages sampling method. For the data collection, it was used a Likert scale with a Cronbach's coefficient alpha reported 0.86. The dimension of this research, "Teachers' perceptions as regards the socialization of children with SEN with peers" consists of three factors, respectively: (1) "Teacher perceptions as regards the adaption of children with SEN to the group of peers," (2) "Teachers' perceptions as regards the participation of children with SEN in managing the situation," (3) "Teachers' perceptions as regards the social participation of children with SEN with their peers." The results of the "Mann-Whitney U Test" revealed significant differences in the perception of trained and untrained teachers, as regards the three factors of the study.

Inclusive work-integrated learning (WIL) requires collaboration between universities, host organizations and students, particularly, when designing and delivering WIL for students with disabilities. Host organizations, however, are not often included in the collaborations. This study explored host organization knowledge, capacity and challenges to providing WIL experiences for students with disability. A case study multi-method approach comprising an online survey and focus groups was undertaken. Host organizations, represented by supervisors, providing WIL to students enrolled in health courses at two Australian higher education institutions participated. The perceived need for student disclosure, office building limitations, and host organization limited knowledge of WIL expectations, training and student needs impeded the development and provision of optimal WIL experiences for students with disability. A strengths-based approach is proposed to improve the inclusion of host organizations in stakeholder collaborations, their capacity and confidence to support students with disability on WIL and to provide relatable student WIL experiences.

Students with disabilities are far less likely than their peers to participate in work-integrated learning (WIL). This gap may contribute to the high levels of unemployment for people with disabilities. Unemployment rates compound when accounting for intersectional identities, with disabled people of color experiencing even higher rates of unemployment. Skill development through opportunities such as WIL is critical to ensure equity-deserving groups can transition successfully from post-secondary institutions into the workforce. Without a transparent, collaborative accommodations process in an environment that is actively reducing stigma and ableism, it is likely students with disabilities will continue to be underrepresented in WIL and the workforce after graduation. This paper presents an overview of disability, barriers to participation, and relevant Canadian legislation. The authors then propose an outline for developing a collaborative accommodations process for WIL opportunities.

This article describes inclusive education based on gender equality, disability and social inclusion (GEDSI) in elementary schools. The research was conducted because the school work plan for inclusive education has not yet included gender equality, disability and social inclusion in elementary schools in Central Java, Indonesia. Elementary school managers still adhere to an exclusive and segregated paradigm, and they are not one hundred per cent inclusive in managing elementary schools. This impacts gender bias, injustice to children with disabilities, and the lack of social inclusion. The research used the participatory action research method through the empowerment of 20 school principals under the Educational Institution Ma'arif Nahdlatul Ulama of Central Java, Indonesia, with the stages of introduction, inculturation, team organizing, action planning, action, evaluation, and reflection. The research findings state that the inclusive education program based on GEDSI is a program prepared in the school work plan by including elements of gender justice, disability, and social inclusion in the standards of content, process, graduate competencies, educators and education personnel, facilities and infrastructure, management, financing, and assessment. The implementation of inclusive education based on GEDSI in 20 elementary schools is carried out through annual programs, semester programs and learning activities. The implementation of this program involves all stakeholders in the school, from the head to the students. Future research must explore inclusive education based on GEDSI in the curriculum and technical aspects of learning.

With the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world in 2019, human life has moved to a different dimension. Accordingly, the education process was carried out remotely in Turkey as well as in the rest of the world. Virtual education was not a new concept for societies, but conducting the entire education process remotely was a very different practice and this practice brought many problems with it. In this context, this study aims to determine the opinions of teachers after the pandemic regarding the virtual education process of primary school students with disabilities who continue inclusive education settings. For this purpose, qualitative research was conducted and data were collected by conducting semi-structured individual interviews with 10 primary school teachers who have students with disabilities in their class. The data were analyzed by content analysis. Research results revealed that teachers did not have any problems in involving students with disabilities who were supported by their parents and who did not have any infrastructure problems in terms of technical equipment, but they have problems in including some children in virtual education. Teachers had difficulty in following the education of students with disabilities during the virtual education process implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, it is a very important issue that our national action plans are ready for the education process of students with disabilities, especially for situations such as pandemics and natural disasters that have recently occurred in our country.

This collaborative and reflective inquiry-based paper critically examines accessibility within the research realm. We focus this inquiry on the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion and specifically address the challenges of establishing accessibility as part of the research enterprise. We acknowledge and reflect on the pivotal role accessibility for persons with disabilities play in an equitable research enterprise and reflect on how nuances in language, behavior, and power dynamics all play a role in creating inclusive environments. This reflective inquiry is a result of a facilitated workshop that took place at a conference attended by professionals working within research administration. Using an inquiry-based workshop approach, facilitators worked with workshop colleagues to discuss, regardless of job title, an ability to influence and shape a more inclusive and accessible system at all levels. Our desired outcomes of this workshop were to collate the collective experiences of our colleagues to uncover barriers and facilitators related to accessibility and to support and learn from our colleagues around ways to create an accessible environment that is a norm. What we find is that accessibility impacts everyone in some way, but it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Collaboration and communication strategies present possible support pathways to more accessible environments.

This study is a needs assessment of Extension staff in the state of Iowa to implement inclusive programming for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Electronic surveys were completed by Extension staff on their attitudes and beliefs toward people with IDD, inclusive programming, and training needs. Results showed that Extension staff had positive views, but that staff reporting personal experience with people with IDD had more positive attitudes and beliefs (p < 0.05). The greatest training need was instructional techniques. The study highlights the importance of direct experience in addition to knowledge- based workshops for training Extension staff to implement inclusive programming.

This research aimed to determine whether the Making Friends (MF) program is effective on social acceptance levels of typically developing children in preschool toward their peers with special needs. The research had an experimental design with a control group, pretest, posttest, and follow-up test. The study included 130 typically developing children in inclusive classrooms in educational institutions in Edirne, Turkey; 64 of whom were in the experimental group and 66 of whom were in the control group. In the current study, the MF program was applied to the children in the experimental group as 3 days a week for 6 weeks. General Information Form and Acceptance Scale for Kindergarten were used as data collection tools. The data were analyzed using the Covariance Analysis in the context of Generalized Linear Models (ANCOVA). The MF program was found to be effective on increasing social acceptance levels of typically developing children in inclusive preschool settings.

The U.S. Supreme Court has heard several cases regarding special education. These cases have resulted in decisions that have addressed issues involving special education programming and procedural issues. On March 21, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in "Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools." This decision, which was the most recent special education case heard by the highest court in the United States, involved litigation in special education. In this brief article, we address the Supreme Court's decision in "Perez" by (a) examining the background of the case; (b) reviewing the decision by the lower courts and the U.S. Supreme Court; and (c) discussing the implications of the case for special educators.

Studies investigating autistic community research priorities indicate a mismatch between what autism research focuses on and what autistic people want to see researched. Furthermore, there has not been a research priority-setting exercise specifically with autistic people in Scotland, where there are unique cultural, political and social contexts. Using a community-based participatory design, we aimed to identify the research priorities of autistic adults living in Scotland. Autistic and non-autistic researchers designed and conducted a survey where 225 autistic adults rated and ranked research topics in order of importance and provided qualitative feedback on issues and questions important to them. The top five research priorities were mental health/well-being, identification and diagnosis of autistic people, support services, knowledge and attitudes towards autistic people and issues impacting autistic women. There were differences in priorities according to different intersections of identity, and qualitative responses indicated a desire for research to focus on support and understanding. The bottom three priorities concerned genetics, treatments and interventions and causes. These findings emphasise the need to address the gap between what autism research focuses on and the everyday lives of autistic people.

Society and education are inherently ableist. Disabled people are routinely excluded from education, or have poorer outcomes within educational systems. Improving educational experiences and outcomes for people of color has required educators to design antiracist curricula that explicitly address racial inequality. Here, we explore parallel antiableist approaches to bioscience education in an essay coauthored by a disabled bioscience student and able-bodied faculty member in bioscience. Our work is underpinned by Critical Disability Theory and draws on disability and pedagogical scholarship as well as our own experiences. The biosciences has a unique need to confront its history in the discredited pseudoscience of eugenics, which has led to discrimination and human rights abuses against disabled people. We provide a brief history of the relationship between biological sciences research and eugenics and explore how this legacy impacts bioscience education today. We then present a recommended structure for antiableist biology education. Our approach goes beyond providing disability access, to a model that educates all students about disability issues and empowers them to challenge ableist narratives and practices.

The Division for Early Childhood (DEC) collaborates with the Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education (EI/ECSE) community and allied partners to create resources (such as publications like Young Exceptional Children [YEC] and The Journal of Early Intervention [JEI] and products like The DEC Recommended Practices and Learning Decks) that reflect collective expertise. These resources address field needs and support DEC's mission of guiding early intervention and special education services for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with or at-risk for disabilities and their families. To advance equity, DEC members are committed to studying, discussing, and applying DEC's Racial Equity Point of View (RE POV; Division for Early Childhood [DEC], 2023) to all its resources and the system that produces them. To create transformative change within DEC's resources, this article includes reflections on how DEC's RE POV can inspire new associated practices and policies to foster a more equitable and inclusive resource system. Also included are reflective questions for readers, DEC members, and non-members alike, to build their critical consciousness related to the need to disrupt structural racism and ableism and (re)build DEC's resource system into one that prioritizes equity.

Teachers' beliefs may influence their teaching practices and use of strategies and interventions. In recent years, the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder has been on the rise, and there has been an increase in the number of students with autism enrolled in mainstream schools. However, teachers often feel ill-prepared to provide appropriate support for students with autism and may hold different beliefs about these students and how to support them. Although empirical studies exploring teachers' beliefs exist, very few studies have systematically examined and analysed teachers' beliefs about teaching students with autism. This study used a systematic review methodology to locate previous studies focused on exploring teachers' beliefs towards students with autism, published in peer-reviewed journals in the past 10 years (2012-2021). The results of the data analysis conceptualised five major themes about different types of teachers' beliefs. The implications for teachers' practices, education reforms, and further research directions are also provided.

Disabled people encounter numerous barriers to accessibility and face discrimination and inequalities in their daily lives. The situation is even more complex for migrants with a disability, who have to learn how to navigate a new bureaucratic system. This study focuses on deaf adult migrants and the linguistic and bureaucratic challenges they face in Swedish society. The data consists of interviews with 43 deaf migrants participating in language learning courses in four folk high schools catering to deaf people in Sweden. Crip Theory and Crip Linguistics are used as lenses to explore the impact of able-bodiedness and linguistic norms on this particular group. The findings show that deaf migrants experience infantilisation, that sign language interpreters are often seen as a one-size-fits-all solution without much consideration for other factors influencing communication, and that normative able-bodiedness underlies many of the bureaucratic issues deaf migrants face.

Currently there is a severe lack of research on autism and Indigenous people in Canada. This scoping review explores this literature gap and assesses the same literature from an Indigenous perspective. Scoping reviews are an effective means to explore the literature in a specific area, in this case, autism and Indigenous people in Canada. We explored existing literature as it pertains to Indigenous populations and autism in Canada. To support this review, the Indigenous Quality Assessment Tool (QAT) was adapted to appraise the quality of literature. In total, there were a total of 212 articles identified of which 24 met the inclusion criteria: (1) some focus on autism, (2) a component specific to Indigenous people, and (3) specific to Canada. Of the 24 articles and reports, 15 were peer-reviewed and the rest considered grey literature. Most articles focused on program delivery with some literature using primary data (quantitative and/or qualitative). Overall, the quality of the research was appraised as poor, as determined by the QAT. Findings reaffirm the critical need for research that addresses autism in Indigenous communities within Canada and show the importance of having research done in full partnership with, or led by, Indigenous people.

Background: The present study examines the relationship between stereotypical beliefs about people with intellectual disabilities, desire for social distance, and general knowledge about human sexuality with attitudes towards the sexuality of adults with mild intellectual disabilities. Method: Two hundred fifty participants from staff, family and community samples completed an online set of questionnaires. Results: Higher agreement with stereotypical beliefs and lower sexual knowledge were associated with less normalising and more paternalistic attitudes towards the sexuality of adults with mild intellectual disabilities. Higher agreement with stereotypical beliefs was also associated with more negative attitudes. On the other hand, willingness to interact with these adults was associated with more normalising and less paternalistic attitudes. Conclusions: Interventions that aim to support adults with intellectual disabilities in relation to their sexuality should also address the perceptions of their support network towards them as individuals with disabilities, as well as their knowledge about sexuality.

In this interview study, we utilize a theoretical framework that combines Bell's theory of choice sets with DisCrit to explore how parents of students with IEPs (SIEPs) experienced a forced school choice embedded with the 2013 mass school closures in Chicago. We find that a child's disability was a primary factor in parent's choices. Further, all parents in our sample had conceptions of ideal schools, but a child's IEP and other barriers--including safety and transportation--could prevent parents from enrolling their child in an otherwise desired school. In this way a child's IEP could provide access to needed services while also denying families from desired learning environments. These findings point to the ableist nature of school choice and contribute to the growing body of research that questions the theoretical underpinnings of school choice as an education reform strategy.

Children with severe multiple disabilities face numerous possibilities for enjoying music and participating in performance activities; however, the research practice for realizing these possibilities involves various difficulties. To understand the disabilities of children and their engagement with music, awareness of one's perception of disability is necessary for each practitioner-researcher. The researchers of the current study reflected on their personal views about disability and life histories and described and analyzed them through collaborative autoethnography (CAE). The study was conducted through the practice of combining electronic music equipment and traditional instruments as a music education project for children with severe multiple disabilities. The results demonstrated that the perceptions of the researchers about disability and their life histories interacted with and transformed their research practice. Additionally, the study highlighted how endeavors in CAE encouraged dialogue among researchers and deepened mutual understanding. The suggestions for researchers of music education practice with children with disabilities include analysis of disability from the first-person perspective and sharing of views among co-researchers.

Autistic people diagnosed in adulthood often report that the experience can be life-changing, but there are issues with the diagnostic pathway. Few studies consider the views of people "currently" seeking diagnosis or contextualise the experience of diagnosis around developing an autistic identity. In this qualitative participatory study, we explored experiences of navigating an autism diagnosis in adulthood in the UK. We recruited six women (aged 21-46 years) who were seeking diagnosis, who worked with the academic researchers across four sessions to develop the study, share their experiences and analyse the themes. In one session, they completed a semi-structured interview alongside photovoice, a community-based action method, to explain and reflect on their experiences. We used reflexive thematic analysis to identify patterns, with four key themes identified: (1) 'everything shattered', (2) 'being seen', (3) 'understanding not judgement, please' and (4) 'here's a leaflet, off you go'. The themes reflected a desire for change and improved support for both diagnosis and developing autistic identity. Following photovoice methodology, together we identified actions to improve adult diagnosis, including involving autistic people in making improvements to the diagnostic criteria, for key professional and community groups to listen more to autistic people and for diagnostic support services to be flexible and appreciative of wider neurodivergence and intersectionality.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of external factors on the experiences and family relationships of autistic adolescents and their families. A qualitative approach was used, with in-depth interviews conducted with 30 participants, including autistic adolescents, siblings and parents from within families with an autistic adolescent family member. The findings suggest that external factors significantly influence the well-being of autistic adolescents and their families. The school environment was identified as a significant factor, with sensory overload, bullying and adverse interactions with teachers having a negative impact on the mental health and quality of family relationships for participants. In addition, the study highlighted that isolation and stigma were major concerns for families, suggesting a need for public efforts to raise awareness and understanding of autism. The lack of appropriate support and services was also identified as a significant challenge that families face. The study highlights the need for person-centred approaches to service provision, which involves including autistic adolescents and their families in the design and delivery of support and services. The study recommends collaboration among schools, service providers, and families, as well as efforts to promote autism-friendly environments in schools and the broader community.

Despite the widespread promotion of inclusive environments within higher education, social barriers and a lack of understanding among university staff continue to hinder students with disabilities in their goals of graduating and finding employment. Using ableism as a theoretical framework, this study aimed to explore attitudes among higher education institution employees towards students with disabilities and their feasibility in different types of education and employment positions. "Employees" in this study included teaching staff, student support, and administration. We conducted a factorial survey experiment in which respondents were invited to evaluate vignettes describing fictional students with and without disabilities. Other factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, and motivation were also included in the vignettes. A total of 2157 higher education employees across Norway participated in the survey and answered four questions regarding the likelihood of the student described in the vignette graduating, finding employment, and being suitable for relevant work tasks. Additionally, respondents were asked to rate how likely it was that they could make arrangements for the student during their studies. Results from multilevel regression analyses suggest that higher education employees are generally positive towards making arrangements for students with disabilities. However, despite this, students with disabilities were considered less likely to graduate, find employment, and less suitable in performing relevant work tasks in comparison to students without disabilities. We argue that ableist expectations continue to dominate perceptions of students within academia, and until ableism is addressed at an institutional level, higher education will remain far from inclusive.

Representations of disabled students -- by both disabled and abled people -- are vital to disabled futures because they hold important implications for how abled people conceive of, and thereby support, disabled students. For years, scholarship on disability in postsecondary education has failed to interrogate the problematic narratives perpetuating inequities for disabled students. In this study, we used critical concepts of place and techniques of diversity management to analyze how disability is represented in existing scholarship. We engaged in a systematic literature review to locate 72 articles on disability and 2-year colleges and then selected 15 articles as data for a Critical Discourse Analysis. Our findings surfaced four themes that enable scholars to determine what narratives are given legitimacy: "justification stories; disability as binary; localized power asymmetries;" and "accommodations as solution." Our findings suggest that existing scholarship uses justification stories to reinforce the idea that smartness is property leaving the pattern of disproportionate disability enrollment unexamined. We extend prior critiques of legal accommodations to include the idea that accommodations are a process by which institutions absorb, and thereby manage, disabled bodyminds. We also demonstrate how ableism happens within existing scholarship through silence (e.g., lack of positionality statements) and binaries (e.g., constructing disability as a dualistic experience). Ultimately, we lead scholars to engage in many actions, including reflecting on the roles they possess to disrupt normative narratives about disproportionate representation of disability on 2-year college campuses, interrogating limitations for disabled individuals engaging in waged labor, and elevating disabled perspectives.

This self-reflective article describes my experience as a disabled-Latino faculty member in a teacher preparation program at a minority-serving urban university. This personal narrative of the physical, emotional, attitudinal, and resource aspects of the author's experience highlights barriers and challenges experienced in the educational and working environment while identifying strategies that assisted in overcoming these barriers. The article specifically relates my progression through my teaching career as I encounter issues of equality and diversity. With this article, disabled faculty and other minority groups are encouraged to incorporate practices that encourage teacher candidates to explore teaching practices for diverse populations in urban settings.

Nine-year old Eliza is a student at Meadows Elementary School where she receives special education services for her diagnosis of Emotional Disturbance. Her teachers are working together to try to bring Eliza back into the classroom after weeks of time spent in the office with no contact with her peers. Mr. Jimenez and Ms. Landon are collaborating to incorporate trauma-informed practices into their classrooms in an attempt to address the absence of secure attachments and feelings of safety in Eliza's life, as well as her inability to control her emotional responses. Creating a trauma-informed classroom benefits everyone but especially students with disabilities who have experienced trauma. In this paper we discuss the need for trauma-informed practices and strategies for making classroom environments more trauma-informed.

Physical activity (PA) benefits children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Evidence suggests that some barriers impede parents from providing PA support for their children with ASD. Parental perceived stigma is one of these barriers. However, few studies have explored how parental perceived stigma influences parental PA support. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between parental perceived stigma and parental PA support, the mediating role of parental self-efficacy, and the moderating effect of having other typically developing children or not. A total of 274 participants were recruited to participate in the study. The results showed that parental self-efficacy mediated the association between parental perceived stigma and parental PA support and the moderating effect of having other typically developing children or not.

Objective/Research Question: The purpose of this grounded theory study is to explore how community college CTE faculty members aim to support disabled students in their career pursuits. Methods: This constructivist grounded theory study entailed interviewing 20 faculty members across two southeastern United States community colleges. Results: Findings unveil the prominence of community college faculty holding mixed perceptions and limited understandings of disabled individuals' experiences in CTE fields, tending to weed disabled students out of these professions, and possessing various ideas for how to better enable disabled students' success, including bolstering disability awareness and acceptance. Conclusions/Contributions: These insights contribute to the formation of the 3Ps Model of Faculty Professional Engagement with Minoritized Students that will guide researchers in how to understand the processes that shape faculty engagement with minoritized students. The study also reveals opportunities for growth in how community college faculty and practitioners address issues surrounding building up disabled community college students' employment pathways.

Dyslexia, characterized by word reading and spelling deficits, has historically been viewed through a medical model of disability. However, a countermovement has emerged, emphasizing the strengths and abilities of neurodiverse individuals, including those with dyslexia. The concept of neurodiversity, which was initially introduced to help inform understanding of a mild form of autism, has expanded to include dyslexia. The expansion has occurred alongside a similar portrayal of dyslexia as an advantage that comes with specific gifts, creating a positive stereotype. While intended to empower individuals with dyslexia, the translation of the concept of neurodiversity to dyslexia in this way can inadvertently stigmatize and isolate those who do not fit this positive stereotype of dyslexia. This review, following a perspective review article format, synthesizes existing literature on the purported gifts of dyslexia and the implications of both negative and positive stereotypes on the well-being of individuals with dyslexia. The findings of this review underscore the importance of dispelling myths about dyslexia and advocating against the use of stereotypes, both negative and positive, in portraying dyslexia. Doing so will help remove the harmful effects of stigmatization, stereotype threat, and the potential of a fixed mindset inherent to being stereotyped.

This exploratory study provides an overview of prominent themes pertaining to portrayals of sign languages (SLs) and Deaf people in the South African press (2011-2019), as well as an analysis of a subset of articles to illustrate the discursive constructions of each of the prominent ideological framings. The findings of the paper suggest that many ways of representing South African Sign Language (SASL) and their users align with international trends. The two most prominent ideological framings are the medical/disability model and the linguistic minority model. Within the medical model, SLs are seen as inferior means of communication used by a disabled minority. Within the linguistic minority framework SLs are regarded as natural, legitimate languages deserving equal status to spoken languages. The paper also identifies an ideological framing that is not predicted by the international literature, coined here as 'diversity tokenism'. Diversity tokenism is when SL is mentioned only to increase perceived diversity, where diversity is a commodity that holds social capital. This portrayal of SASL seems to be increasing and holds a warning: although SASL users have received official recognition and rights through the recent declaration of SASL as an official language, it might not be the end of the battle to ensure that users of SASL can live out their linguistic citizenship.

Inclusion classes (IC) are one of Greece's most crucial educational inclusion policies. This paper explores the institution of inclusion classes as a supportive educational framework for students with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) for their inclusion in the mainstream education system through teachers' conceptualisations. In this research, interpretive phenomenological analysis was used. Nine teachers of inclusive education in primary schools were involved in the study. The results showed that teachers had approached inclusion classes as closed structures with specific clinical criteria for selecting students with SEND and facing institutional barriers. At the same time, participants stressed through their discourse that the attitudes of school community members depend on the characteristics of students with SEND, which sometimes leads to their stigmatisation and categorisation and raises issues of educational and social exclusion. An implication of existing policies is the necessity to incorporate fully inclusive education principles and establish a learning framework of functional emancipatory pedagogical practices.

Teachers' expectations influence students' outcomes. Studies demonstrate that teachers lower their performance expectations of students with learning problems when these students are labelled with a 'Learning Disability' (LD) diagnosis. Our study aims to investigate whether these effects can be replicated in N = 429 special and regular education teachers. We also investigate whether positive implicit and explicit attitudes towards inclusion mitigate the negative effects of the LD label on teachers' performance expectations. Teachers were randomly assigned to the experimental (n = 214) or control group (n = 215). Both groups read the same description of a fictitious student with learning problems. In addition, the student was labelled as 'learning disabled' in the experimental group only. Results show that teachers' expected graduation level and school track recommendation were negatively affected by the LD label. It also led to a more frequent assumption that the student has an LD. Regardless of the LD label, special education teachers had lower performance expectations than regular education teachers. A positive implicit attitude towards inclusion reduced the likelihood that teachers believe that the labelled student has an LD. The findings are placed in the context of international research on disability labels and inclusive education.

Objectives: WhatMakesUs is a digital media campaign aimed at reducing mental health stigma in the Greater Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area. This study evaluated the campaign's impact at the end of the second year of the campaign by examining different aspects of mental health stigma, including social distance, attitudes, behaviours and self-efficacy, among campaign-aware (CA) individuals and non-campaign-aware (NCA) individuals. The study also explored the campaign's feasibility and potential for adaptation to other parts of the USA. Design, Setting, and Method: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted in the campaign's implementation area. Respondents were recruited through a panel recruiting company using non-probabilistic methods. Digital metrics from the campaign's social media accounts and website were collected and analysed using Google Analytics. Results: CA respondents exhibited lower social distance and stigmatising attitudes and beliefs, and more positive behaviours and self-efficacy towards people with mental health conditions (MHCs) compared to NCA respondents. A significantly higher proportion of CA respondents reported living with (p = 0.001), working with (p = 0.005), and having close friendships with individuals with MHCs (p = 0.043). CA respondents found therapy and counselling effective treatments for MHCs (p = 0.005), greater comfort in providing support to individuals with MHCs (p < 0.001), pursued steps to improve their own mental health (p = 0.032) and perceived their workplaces taking an active role in their mental health (p = 0.029), when compared to NCA respondents. Digital metrics indicated successful engagement with the campaign's intended audience. Conclusion: Findings highlight the impact of digital campaigns in addressing the stigmatisation of MHCs and provide valuable insights for future campaigns.

The experiences of autistic parents when interacting with statutory services for their autistic children is not well understood. This study investigates the experiences of autistic parents' interactions with statutory services, including education and healthcare, in relation to their autistic children. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to investigate their experiences. Ten autistic mothers of autistic children in mainstream education completed semi-structured interviews, which were co-developed with autistic parents. Two superordinate themes were developed: (1) The wider system is the problem and (2) Feeling judged and stigmatised. While Theme 1 demonstrates some similarities in the experiences of autistic parents to that of non-autistic parents in previous studies, theme 2 is unique to autistic parents who may feel that they are being treated differently. These themes indicate the importance of training encouraging a strength-based rather than deficit-based understanding of autism. Participants highlighted the wider system is the problem rather than individual professionals, and that it places some families at a disadvantage.

Peer mentors play a crucial role in campus-based living and support programs that assist autistic students in their transition to U.S. colleges. However, limited research has examined the characteristics of potential peer mentors and incentives that may be necessary to staff such programs. The present study evaluated the relationship between the characteristics of college students and their intention to participate in an autism spectrum disorder-specific living and support program. Undergraduate students (N = 210; 83% females, M[subscript age] = 18.9 years, SD = 1.2) completed questionnaires assessing personality characteristics, acceptance of individuals with disabilities, and intrinsic and extrinsic motives for potential participation. Results suggest that participants would be highly motivated to participate if course credit toward their major or monetary incentives were offered. In addition, a history of contact with autistic individuals and agreeableness emerged as the most robust predictors of students' intention to participate. Findings from this study may improve inclusivity on college campuses.

People with intellectual disabilities (IDs) have experienced involuntary and inhumane research practices. Consequently, researchers have shifted towards "excluding" those with IDs; caregivers, teachers, or peers compose study samples, dominating a space they "indirectly" experience. Researcher bias regarding intellectual capacity has resulted in a unique research gap that overlooks insights from the population the research is intended to benefit. People with ID are interested in research participation and have a right to be included in decision-making that impacts them. Emancipatory inquiry allows school psychology scholars to center student voices while also promoting social justice. Emancipatory inquiry empowers the "subjects" of social inquiry by producing knowledge that directly benefits disenfranchised populations. Emancipatory inquiry aligns with the social justice frame of DisCrit, which compels us to privilege the voices of marginalized populations and recognize that many of the gains for disabled populations have largely occurred because of the benefits they afford White, able-bodied, middle-class citizens. Using Emancipatory inquiry, school psychology scholars can prepare trainees and future researchers to conduct ethically sound research, prioritize first-person voices of those with ID, provide socially valid services to students and their families, and move school psychology closer to partnership with the disabled community.

This experimental study examined ways to reduce stigma against children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. We randomly assigned 220 Chinese pre-service teachers to one of the four experimental groups in which they read a vignette describing a student with ADHD symptoms. The contents of the vignettes differed from one another on two dimensions: (a) the causes of the symptoms (biomedical versus social) and (b) the extent to which the student has exerted effort to improve (high effort versus low effort). Participants who received biomedical explanations of ADHD ascribed less blame to the target compared with those who received social explanations. However, the group difference was only significant in the "low-effort" group, but not in the "high-effort" group. Similarly, the "biomedical" group indicated higher levels of entity beliefs than the "social" group, but the group difference was only significant in the "low-effort" group but not in the "high-effort" group. Finally, participants in the "high-effort" condition reported a stronger intention to interact with the target compared with participants in the "low-effort" condition, whereas onset causal attributions did not affect participants' ratings on behavioural intention. These findings may have implications for reducing ADHD stigma and bear relevance to other kinds of social stigma.

Negative peer attitudes are a significant barrier to social participation of students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms. Although many intervention studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of interaction or disability awareness programmes in promoting positive peer attitudes, reliance on students' self-reported attitudes is prone to social desirability bias and is unable to capture implicit prejudice. The present study examined changes in students' explicit and implicit attitudes toward peers with disabilities after a curriculum-based intervention programme ("Prinzip Vielfalt"), which aims to promote an open-minded attitude toward human diversity. Teachers in 12 primary school classes in the experimental group (n = 195 students) used the programme for eight weeks, whereas a control group of 12 classes (n = 191 students) used no intervention. Students' pre- and post-intervention attitudes were assessed using an adapted version of the Chedoke--McMaster Attitudes Towards Children with Handicaps Scale and a disability Implicit Association Test for children. Post-intervention analyses revealed a significant relative improvement in explicit attitudes toward peers with disabilities in the experimental group compared to the control group (b = 0.20, 95% CI = [0.03; 0.37]) but no change in implicit attitudes (b = -0.03, 95% CI = [-0.10; 0.03]). Thus, while the intervention positively affected self-reported attitudes, implicit negative associations were unchanged. Using explicit and implicit measures of attitudes and attitude changes among children can provide valuable insights into the mechanisms and effectiveness of different intervention strategies.

Could a transformative, inclusive and emancipatory educational framework like the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) advance academic success for all? Could racism and dis/ableism be dismantled through such an emerging educational trend that offers a redefinition of dis/ability abolishing oppressive pedagogical practices that perpetuate constructed views of special needs, often negatively correlated with racial and intellectual superiority? Could such a framework that foregrounds physical, cognitive and linguistic injustices advance achievement beyond merely meeting academic literacy standards within higher education settings like writing centres in a post-COVID 21st-century South Africa? These critical questions are some of the tensions raised in this paper proposing a compelling, yet controversial attempt at advancing student learning and achievement within an expanded definition of disability offered by the UDL framework developed by Rose and Meyer at the Center for Applied Special Technology at Harvard University. While COVID-19 centred around a pandemic, this global catastrophe accelerated the technological thrust into virtual and blended learning mediums of learning and engagement. Yet, given the technological explosion of the mid- and late 20th century, in many ways education have headed towards this direction. Now more than ever, the awareness of the Universal Design for Learning within the role of the writing centre and academic literacy is especially critical, given the drive for technologically driven approaches to address issues of social justice. This paper seeks to understand the obstacles and opportunities of the UDL framework within the role of writing centres in post-COVID 21st-century South African higher education. Through professional insights as a qualified practising writing consultant both locally in South Africa and in the United States, this reflective critique on the emerging vociferous dialogue around the adoption of the Universal Design for Learning framework at higher education institutions in South Africa, and its implications for the role of the writing centre, are based on this author's pragmatic, commonplace experiences as well as research studies conducted on UDL and the Harvard Review. It is hoped that this reflective paper may make visible some of the inherent juxtapositions Universal Design for Learning may hold for meeting individual students' learning needs principled on its universal approach to learning success for all, affording opportunities for further research and critique.

Catering for the mathematical needs of disabled learners equitably and productively requires the anti-ableist preparation and professional development of teachers. In CAPTeaM (Challenging Ableist Perspectives on the Teaching of Mathematics), we design tasks that emulate inclusion-related challenges from the mathematics classroom, and we engage teachers with these tasks in workshop settings. In this paper, we focus on evidence from one type of task in which participants engage in small groups with solving a mathematical problem while at least one of them is temporarily and artificially deprived of access to a sensory field or familiar channel of communication. In this paper, we focus on evidence of emerging resignification -- discursive and affective shifts in the participating teachers' sense-making about what makes the construction of mathematical meaning possible and valuably different -- as they work on the tasks. By linking Vygotsky's vision about the educational changes required to empower and include disabled learners with more contemporary ideas from embodied cognition and disability studies, our analyses show how engagement with the tasks affects participants' realisation and appreciation of interdependencies between learners, teacher, resources, and emotions, highlights alternative forms of mathematical agency and gives opportunities to turn initial sense of impasse and despair into joy.

Purpose: Stuttering is a speech condition that can have a major impact on a person's quality of life. This descriptive study aimed to identify subgroups of people who stutter (PWS) based on stuttering burden and to investigate differences between these subgroups on psychosocial aspects of life. Method: The study included 618 adult participants who stutter. They completed a detailed survey examining stuttering symptomatology, impact of stuttering on anxiety, education and employment, experience of stuttering, and levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. A two-step cluster analytic procedure was performed to identify subgroups of PWS, based on self-report of stuttering frequency, severity, affect, and anxiety, four measures that together inform about stuttering burden. Results: We identified a high- (n = 230) and a low-burden subgroup (n = 372). The high-burden subgroup reported a significantly higher impact of stuttering on education and employment, and higher levels of general depression, anxiety, stress, and overall impact of stuttering. These participants also reported that they trialed more different stuttering therapies than those with lower burden. Conclusions: Our results emphasize the need to be attentive to the diverse experiences and needs of PWS, rather than treating them as a homogeneous group. Our findings also stress the importance of personalized therapeutic strategies for individuals with stuttering, considering all aspects that could influence their stuttering burden. People with high-burden stuttering might, for example, have a higher need for psychological therapy to reduce stuttering-related anxiety. People with less emotional reactions but severe speech distortions may also have a moderate to high burden, but they may have a higher need for speech techniques to communicate with more ease. Future research should give more insights into the therapeutic needs of people highly burdened by their stuttering.

How medical students, their teachers, and school administrators understand disability appears connected to ongoing, unequal access to medical education for disabled people. The stigmatization of disability within medical education affects students' disability disclosures, yet few studies have explored how understandings of disability influence inclusion practices beyond individual student actions. This paper develops the concept of legibility, derived from a constructivist grounded theory study that examined disability inclusion at four U.S. medical schools through interviews with 19 disabled students and 27 school officials (faculty and administrators). With two dimensions (recognition and assessment of possibility), legibility demonstrates that knowing disability is relational, contextual, and equivocal. Drawing from the field of disability studies, the paper argues that the current paradigm of disability inclusion demands that students' disability experiences be highly legible to themselves and others, yet increased legibility comes with potential risk due to prevalent ableism. While individual interactions can shift understandings of disability towards greater inclusivity, systemic action that embeds liberating discourses of disability into medical education is needed.