“Working the Cracks”: Leveraging Educators’ Insider Knowledge to Advocate for Inclusive Practices

ABSTRACT In this article, I highlight resistance methods that teachers who identified as having disability studies in education and social justice identities used to uphold ideological commitments to these identities. I specifically focus on the teachers’ leverage of the tactic of “working the cracks” to actively reframe disability outside of deficit-based frameworks with colleagues and in support of families. As Collins described, individuals working in bureaucratic systems (e.g., public schools) must use the cracks of the system, or insider knowledge, to find the spaces and fissures that they can work through and expand on. Educators used the cracks of the systems of special education to advocate alongside and for the inclusion of students with disabilities.