Seeing the Unseen: Applying Intersectionality and Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) Frameworks in Preservice Teacher Education

Background/Context: This paper explores how intersectionality and DisCrit can be used as analytic tools to scaffold preservice teachers’ ability to see the ways in which referrals to and services within special education reproduce inequities as a function of race and perceptions of ability that are rooted in White, middle-class, able-bodied norms. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This qualitative study analyzes White preservice teachers’ understanding and application of intersectionality and DisCrit. Applying critical theoretical perspectives, preservice teachers engage in identifying instances of oppression in society and schools and naming the resulting harm to Black students and families. This paper focuses on the following research questions: How do White preservice teachers engage with critical frameworks intended to unearth the impacts of racism and ableism on Black students? What do their responses reveal about preservice teachers’ level of critical consciousness? Population/Participants/Subjects: Participants in this study were preservice general education teachers in the last semester of coursework of an intensive 12-month master’s program in secondary education at a large predominantly White Midwestern university. This study focuses on four self-identified White able-bodied and one White (dis)abled preservice teacher who represent exemplars of the types of engagement evidenced by preservice teachers within the course. Intervention/Program/Practice: The course that was the site of this study focused on preparing preservice teachers to teach and support Students Identified with (Dis)abilities in middle and high school classrooms. The first portion of the course focused on analyzing the history of racism and ableism in special education using critical frameworks. These class sessions provided preservice teachers with frameworks they could apply to their experiences at their school sites and language they needed to discuss racism and ableism. Research Design: This article reports on a qualitative case study of general education preservice teacher engagement with the critical frameworks of intersectionality and disability critical race theory (DisCrit) in a predominantly White teacher education program. Data Collection and Analysis: For the duration of the course, video recordings of whole group discussions and audio recordings of small group discussions were collected. Descriptive and in vivo coding were employed during the first level of coding to closely highlight participants’ perspectives that were rooted in their own language. The second level of analysis captured the content of the ideas expressed by preservice teachers when engaging and employing critical frameworks, and the third level of analysis captured preservice teacher engagement in ways that demonstrated either active adoption, quiet adoption, resistant engagement, or resistant deflection of course material. Findings/Results: There is a fluidity in which preservice teachers move through levels of engagement (active adoption, quiet adoption, resistant engagement, or resistant deflection) when explicitly taught critical frameworks to help them identify and disrupt inequity, in this case, racism and ableism in schools. For example, a preservice teacher may experience dissonance when there is misalignment between their previously held assumptions and new learning. At first, they may resist this knowledge and then adopt new perspectives over time. They may also go back and forth between resistance and adoption, or they may remain resistant throughout the course. Additionally, a preservice teacher may actively adopt course content and frameworks that align with their previous orientations and quietly or actively adopt new frameworks over time. Conclusions/Recommendations: Teaching critical frameworks is an important tool to understanding preservice teachers’ orientations toward inequity. Choosing critical frameworks that undergird teacher education courses supports the development of objectives that are antiracist/antiableist. It also provides teacher educators guidance in choosing materials/artifacts that will encourage preservice teachers to discuss the implications of those frameworks. Critical frameworks provide a method of helping preservice teachers see inequity that aspects of their privilege render invisible and provide an assessment tool for teacher educators to analyze preservice teachers’ orientations toward inequity and how this manifests in their orientation toward students of historically marginalized groups.