The construction, expression, and consequences of difference in education practice, policy, and research

Abstract

In this essay, I discuss three key ideas related to the construction and treatment of “difference” in and around schools and schooling. First, just as difference is most commonly located within marginalized populations at the intersections and along the lines of race, disability, social class, national origin, sexuality, sex, language, and religion, such “locating” is done by those socialized and reinforced to view themselves as normal and the norm against which they compare those different from them. Therefore, normalcy operates to maintain positions of superiority for some and inferiority for others. Next, the situation of disability at the intersection of non-dominant identities can be a powerful tool for disrupting normative spaces, practices, and beliefs. Finally, I call for critical action that exposes the negative construction of and consequences of difference in the academy, noting how epistemologies, methodologies, publication outlets and formats, and sentence structures that fall outside what we associate with normalcy, and those who employ them, are also sorted along lines of competence and incompetence, leading to the dismissal or exclusion of disabled scholars, scholars of color, and those scholars engaging in more public praxis outside the academy walls.

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