Pursuing Justice-Driven Inclusive Education Research: Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) in Early Childhood

Inclusive education research has largely left intact unquestioned expectations about what children should know or do by certain age markers and assumptions that children with dis/abilities should work toward reaching certain milestones or exhibiting certain behaviors within the general education classroom (Baglieri et al., 2011; Dudley-Marling & Burns, 2014). An emphasis on children’s perceived deficits and a need for them to attain dominant developmental expectations to access learning opportunities reflects ableism (Ferri & Bacon, 2011). Primarily basing such expectations on the values and perspectives of white communities reflects an intersection of ableism and racism that uniquely affects the early learning opportunities of children of Color with dis/abilities. While this is not the intention of the ECE/ECSE field, a critical framework, such as DisCrit, explicitly attends to the impact that dominant expectations and practices have on marginalized groups (e.g., whether practices contribute to greater access and participation, a sense of belonging, and equitable outcomes).

The perception of children, particularly white children, as innocent and not developmentally ready to learn about race, dis/ability, and injustice is one example of the obscured dual influence of ableism and racism on dominant child development expectations (Garlen, 2019; Lalvani & Bacon, 2019). Teachers position children as innocent to ableism and racism when they use classroom materials and pedagogy that simplify and/or misrepresent history, withhold knowledge about racial injustice, minimize or negate racial incidents, and avoid conversations about dis/ability and race (Beneke & Cheatham, 2020; Berman et al., 2017; Garlen, 2019; Lalvani & Bacon, 2019). However, young children actively construct meaning about race and dis/ability from explicit and implicit messages in their worlds (Compton-Lilly et al., 2017; Lalvani & Bacon, 2019). They use such reasoning to understand and negotiate their racial, linguistic, and ability identities (Compton-Lilly et al., 2017; Derman-Sparks, 2008) and to make choices about whether and how to interact with others (Derman-Sparks, 2008; Yu et al., 2015). Moreover, parents of Color have expressed that understanding race and racism is critical for their young children’s development (e.g., Anderson et al., 2015). Thus, assumptions about children’s innocence of race/racism and ability/ableism reflect narrowed child expectations while ignoring the experiences and needs of children of Color.

Research can inadvertently minimize or obscure the effects of racism when race/ethnicity is not considered as an influence on the experiences of young children with dis/abilities and/or is simply reported as demographic information without consideration of its meaning. For example, multiple systematic reviews of early intervention and ECSE research have found that participants’ race/ethnicity is often not reported (e.g., Baril & Humphreys, 2017; Steed & Kranski, 2020). Steed and Kranski (2020) found that race/ethnicity was reported in less than half of studies examining interventions to address young children’s perceived challenging behavior. When race was reported, Black and Latinx children were overrepresented in participant samples, which could be illustrative of other research findings that the behavior of children of Color is disproportionately interpreted in deficits ways (e.g., Gilliam et al., 2016; Wright & Ford, 2016). As Steed and Kranski (2020) noted, leaving out racial information limits the field’s understanding of who practices do and do not benefit. From a DisCrit lens, that call may be expanded to question both the impact of said practices and their goals (i.e., what is considered a beneficial outcome of behavioral support practices, given the prevalence of racism and ableism). For example, researchers using DisCrit to advance justice-driven inclusive education research may explore how teachers make decisions about what is considered “challenging behavior,” whether such reasoning and subsequent practices are differentially applied across multiple race and ability groups, and the multiple potential effects of said practices on multiply marginalized children. Thus, a beneficial outcome would not just be determined based on whether an undesirable behavior decreased or a desirable behavior increased. Instead, it would be determined based on whether a child’s needs were met, the impact on their participation and subsequent opportunities, and whether their cultural or linguistic expression was restricted or sustained. Such findings and interpretations would help explicate how notions of typical or desired behavior perpetuate racism and ableism, and therefore, how behavioral expectations and supports could be changed to address inequities, particularly for children with multiple marginalized identities. As a result, researchers could make recommendations for how expectations and practices could be expanded to reflect more diverse ways of learning and behaving (component 2 of justice-driven inclusive education research). ECE/ECSE research that has explored other types of decision-making processes has contributed to a greater understanding of potential causes of participation inequities and ways to make early childhood processes more responsive to multiply marginalized children and families (Hancock & Cheatham, 2020).

The very act of labeling a child based on a single marker of difference (e.g., “disabled,” “English Language Learner,” “at risk”) can obscure the diverse experiences of individuals within those categories (Baglieri et al., 2011). A DisCrit analysis considers how multiple oppressions converge in the lives of people labeled along multiple lines of “difference” (Annamma et al., 2020). Multiple scholars have noted that inclusive education research has primarily focused on children with dis/abilities as a single dimension of identity without deeply examining how multiple oppressive ideologies (e.g., ableism, racism, sexism) inform educators’ attitudes and practices (Baglieri et al., 2011; Waitoller & Annamma, 2017), or how inclusive practices may need to be differentially applied for multiply marginalized young children with dis/abilities (Bartlett & Mickelson, 2019).

Research using single-dimension analyses has contributed to the unique experiences of multiply marginalized children (e.g., children of Color with dis/abilities; multilingual children with dis/abilities) being obscured, which can allow deficit narratives to go unchallenged. For example, scholars have argued that research addressing “school readiness” for young children with dis/abilities has largely not considered how conceptualizations of readiness are grounded in white, middle-class developmental norms that may contribute to the disproportionate labeling of children of Color, those experiencing poverty, and multilingual children as “unready” (Dyson, 2015; Ferri & Bacon, 2011). Research and policy that adopts narrow conceptualizations of “readiness” can lead to interventions that blame families of Color as failing to support their children’s development (and themselves requiring intervention) while ignoring systemic educational and sociopolitical inequities (e.g., Baquedano-López et al., 2013; Dudley-Marling & Lucas, 2009). Similarly, the previously discussed behavioral intervention systematic review by Steed and Kranski (2020) found that multiple identity markers (e.g., race, gender, dis/ability, indicators of socioeconomic status) were rarely reported for individual participants, which limits the field’s understanding of how to address intersectional inequities related to behavioral expectations and exclusion. Thus, discourses and practices intended to support children’s development that only attend to dis/ability cannot necessarily support equity for multiply marginalized young children with dis/abilities.

Research can advance intersectional justice by examining multiple dimensions of identity and converging oppressions. For example, examinations of curricular materials and texts have found disproportionately low representation of children of Color (Crisp et al., 2016) and those with dis/abilities (Favazza et al., 2017). While such research is useful for identifying gaps in classroom material provision, future research could use a DisCrit lens to examine representation of children with multiple marginalized identities (e.g., children of Color with dis/abilities; multilingual children with dis/abilities). Intersectional analysis can facilitate a more complex, nuanced understanding of the unique learning experiences of multiply marginalized young children (component 1 of justice-driven inclusive education) and how early educational settings can value multitudes of diverse identities and backgrounds (component 2).

Racialized developmental expectations and labeling that disproportionately position children of Color as “at risk” or having a dis/ability can contribute to them being sorted into restrictive learning experiences (Adair et al., 2017; Ferri & Bacon, 2011; Goodley & Runswick-Cole, 2010). For example, when educators ascribe to deficit perspectives of marginalized children considered to be “at risk” (e.g., children experiencing poverty, multilingual children) or disabled, they often adopt practices narrowly focused on addressing perceived deficits rather than richer learning opportunities afforded to wealthier, en/abled, white children (Adair et al., 2017; Martínez-Álvarez, 2019). Although not recommended by many in the field, such research indicates these practices continue to happen. In addition, once labeled as disabled, Black and Latinx children are disproportionately placed in segregated settings compared to white children with dis/abilities, regardless of family income (Grindal et al., 2019). Segregated placements often limit children to curriculum focused on their perceived deficits which may lead to their future exclusion as the gap between them and “normal” expands (Dudley-Marling & Burns, 2014; Ferri & Bacon, 2011). Thus, constructions of race and ability make children of Color more likely to be labeled as “at risk” or disabled while constructions of dis/ability are used to justify their exclusion from learning spaces and opportunities. Such deficit labeling and sorting results in early educational experiences that may effectively be disabling.

Given these and other intersectional consequences of racism and ableism, DisCrit can facilitate justice-driven inclusive education research that helps examine how constructions of race and dis/ability dually affect the lived experiences of multiply marginalized children and how such inequities can be addressed. For example, researchers can use DisCrit to examine participation during classroom activities, looking for patterns that may indicate inequitable distribution of learning opportunities for multiply marginalized children (e.g., who receives content vs. management talk, whether book questions facilitate expression of diverse perspectives). Such an examination can help researchers recommend specific ways to eschew marginalizing patterns so that educational practices rectify inequitable distribution of learning experiences (component 1 of justice-driven inclusive education research) and reflect the valuing of diverse ways of being and learning (component 2).

Early childhood research has largely been driven by the perspectives of (white, female) teachers and researchers (Yoon & Templeton, 2019). As a result, the voices and experiences of multiply marginalized children and their families have often not been taken up to help determine educational norms and supports. For example, in their systematic review of phonological awareness interventions for Latinx children, Soto and colleagues (2019) found that only two out of 17 identified studies included some measure of child or family satisfaction and most were only conducted in English (as opposed to Spanish or multiple languages), which limits external validity. Similarly, several systematic reviews examining the use of social validity measures in intervention research for children with dis/abilities have found that such measures are typically administered after the intervention and participants are rarely given the opportunity to choose intervention goals or procedures (Ledford et al., 2016; Snodgrass et al., 2018). While these literature reviews remind the field of established social validity guidelines, it is critical that any justice-driven inclusive education research using a DisCrit lens incorporates the perspectives of multiply marginalized families and communities throughout the planning processes for both educational supports and research methods.

When children’s perspectives have been included in ECE/ECSE research, studies tend to focus on the perspectives of (primarily white) en/abled children. For example, ample peer acceptance research examines the attitudes and behaviors of en/abled children toward children with dis/abilities (e.g., Hong et al., 2020; Yu et al., 2015). While such research typically collects sociometric or observational data from both en/abled children and children with dis/abilities, research questions and discussion often center around en/abled children’s play behaviors toward children with dis/abilities and how children with dis/abilities compare to en/abled children in peer ratings. Such research draws attention to the need for teachers to facilitate positive social interactions between children with dis/abilities and en/abled children. However, it does not necessarily reflect the social preferences and agency of multiply marginalized children with dis/abilities.

Excluding or minimizing the voices of multiply marginalized children and families reinforces what Waitoller and Annamma (2017, p. 36) called the “individual-assimilationist” focus of some inclusive education research. That is, valuing the perspectives of white en/abled teachers and children most in research reinforces race and ability hierarchies, justifying the perspective that children who do not assimilate to normative social and behavioral standards may need to be labeled, intervened on, or excluded until they are closer to normative standards. Moreover, when research compares children and families from marginalized groups to institutionalized norms without incorporating their experiences and characteristics in their own terms, it reinforces deficit perceptions and ineffective, potentially unnecessary, intervention (Dudley-Marling & Lucas, 2009). DisCrit privileges the voices and perspectives of marginalized communities (component 3 of justice-driven inclusive education research) which allows the complexities of their experiences to remain intact and directly challenges racial and ability hierarchies. Drawing on this tenet, justice-driven inclusive education research that aims to support positive social interactions, for example, may learn from children with dis/abilities about the peers they enjoy playing with and observe those interactions to identify recommended practices and contextual features that facilitate a sense of belonging for children with dis/abilities and the social interactions they value. Incorporating innovative methods, such as storytelling and photos, can help researchers amplify children’s perspectives and highlight diverse patterns of learning and participation (Koivula et al., 2020).

Historically and contemporarily, Black and Latinx children have reduced access to high-quality early educational programs (based on field-accepted norms) compared to their white peers (Valentino, 2018). Such educational inequities reflect decades of legal segregation, systemic financial divestment from communities of Color, and exclusion of communities of Color from civic processes (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Moreover, racialized, class-based notions of “readiness” and ability based on psychometric and achievement testing have been upheld in educational policy, which can contribute to the positioning of children of Color as being “at risk,” dis/abled, and requiring remediation from an early age (Baker, 2002; Dyson, 2015; Ferri & Bacon, 2011). This is evidenced by accountability-based educational reform policies, such as Race to the Top. Such policies aim to promote high-quality education and address the “achievement gap.” However, the policies often inadvertently reproduce inequities by promoting academic and behavioral standardization and reinforcing deficit assumptions about marginalized groups that justify exclusionary practices (Jahng, 2011). Meanwhile, such policies position families of Color as not being able, or willing, to support their children’s development (Baquedano-López et al., 2013; Kaomea, 2005). This contributes to families’ exclusion from educational decision-making and undermines their ability to advocate for their children in the face of racism and ableism (e.g., Gillborn et al., 2016).

Research has contributed to the codification of children of Color and those who are multiply marginalized (e.g., children of Color experiencing poverty) being positioned as “at risk” based on their racial identity and/or socioeconomic status alone (Ladson-Billings, 2014). For example, when race or socioeconomic status are used as independent child-level variables in quantitative analyses without contextualizing their meaning, conclusions may be drawn that erroneously dismiss the contributions of ableism and racism to assessment, narrow definitions of typical development, and the structures and processes of schooling (Collins et al., 2016). The singular use of race, home language, and/or socioeconomic status to label children as “at risk” is evidenced in some research examining the effects of comprehensive or multi-tiered intervention models and language interventions (e.g., McLeod et al., 2017; Pentimonti et al., 2017). While such research provides useful information about potential ways to provide and structure supports, by operationalizing “risk” as being static and inherent in the child and/or family (as opposed to social systems and institutionalized practices), it can perpetuate disproportionate labeling of children of Color as having dis/abilities and their subsequent placement in segregated classrooms (Grindal et al., 2019; Wright & Ford, 2016). The latter is allowed by the legal ambiguities imbued in IDEA’s mandate that children be placed in the least restrictive environment (LRE) to the “maximum extent appropriate” (Grindal et al., 2019). Justice-driven inclusive education research necessarily considers how systems contribute to findings and the practical implications for institutional changes. For instance, some scholars have presented evidence that warrants caution in equating “risk” with lower socioeconomic status and have advocated for more strength-based approaches (Albritton et al., 2017).

Importantly, inclusion is still legally defined based on percentage of time in the general education classroom (Grindal et al., 2019). Yet, such a legal conceptualization of inclusive education obscures the fact that children of Color with dis/abilities may be included into general education classrooms with exclusionary practices and structures (Brown et al., 2010; Watson, 2018). The classrooms children with dis/abilities are included into can be disabling when they are expected to perform in certain ways based on deficit assumptions and are “managed” accordingly with practices that restrict access to certain spaces (e.g., being pulled out of the classroom), activities (e.g., being limited to skills-based interventions addressing perceived deficits; reduced access to bilingual and biliterate opportunities and supports), and social opportunities (e.g., teachers refraining from challenging notions of dis/ability and race that led to social isolation for some children) (Adair et al., 2017; Goodley & Runswick-Cole, 2010; Martínez-Álvarez, 2019). Consequently, race and dis/ability intersect such that the legal definition of inclusion intended to promote justice for children with dis/abilities can obscure the unique experiences of children of Color with dis/abilities and may therefore undermine efforts for justice for multiply marginalized children.

As DisCrit attends to such historical and legal aspects of how race and dis/ability informs research and practice, it provides an analytic lens that locates deficiency in systems rather than individuals, which helps contextualize findings and points to new avenues for improving ECE/ECSE for multiply marginalized young children. Drawing on this tenet, research could be conducted that examines the effects of policies, such as policies intended to increase access to early education or that assert certain standards of quality, on multiply marginalized children’s educational experiences. By refraining from locating “risk” in the child, justice-driven inclusive education research may explicate the impact of policies on the learning opportunities of multiply marginalized young children (component 1 of justice-driven inclusive education research) and center their experiences in work that has policy implications (component 3).

Property reflects both physical objects and anything that is ascribed value. Accordingly, whiteness and ability are given property status because they are socially valued as something to attain and benefit from (Harris, 1993). In the classroom, whiteness (ways of being predominately valued, enacted, and expected by white communities) and ability can be seen as property because they are signifiers of those who have and continue to benefit the most from the educational system, and those who possess the power to distribute resources and include or exclude (Annamma, 2015). Importantly, both whiteness and ability (including notions of “smartness” and “goodness”) are not inherent qualities in an individual but rather can be ascribed to an individual based on their adherence to dominant characteristics and behaviors, as well as through access to enabling opportunities, privileges, and cultural capital (Broderick & Leonardo, 2016; Leonardo & Broderick, 2011). This is not to say that all educators explicitly label young children as “good” or “bad”—in fact, many educators explicitly resist using that kind of language. Instead, tenet six points to the ways that educators’ well-intentioned use of institutionalized practices can, in effect, (re)establish racial-ability hierarchies by placing positive (i.e., “good”) and negative (i.e., “bad”) values on children’s abilities and behaviors, and by extension, their identities.

Whiteness and ability are disproportionately valued in the early childhood classroom in a number of ways. For example, it is well-documented that classroom literature and other materials have a long way to go in representing the multifaceted experiences that children of Color and children with dis/abilities bring to classrooms (e.g., Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2020; Crisp et al., 2016; Favazza et al., 2017). Moreover, when early childhood books and classroom materials do represent children with dis/abilities and/or children of Color, they may resort to tropes about overcoming disability and everyone being the same, or reduce communities of Color to historical figures and experiences (Crisp et al., 2016; Lalvani & Bacon, 2019). While materials that do not explicitly address race and ability differences appear to encourage positive messages (e.g., “believe in yourself,” “we’re all equal”), rendering race and dis/ability invisible can actually reinforce notions of normalcy that marginalize children with dis/abilities (Lalvani & Bacon, 2019), and reinforce whiteness as the norm (Berman et al., 2017).

Educators protect and uphold this differential valuing of whiteness and ability when they use practices that regulate or limit participation to privilege notions of “typical” learning and “academic readiness” (e.g., focusing on evaluating and correcting academic responses rather than discussing substantive race-related content; Beneke & Cheatham, 2019; Beneke & Cheatham, 2020). Because of such classroom materials and practices, children of Color with dis/abilities are not only excluded from valuable learning opportunities (regardless of physical placement), but the deficit ways they are positioned and treated (e.g., being denied access to more enabling opportunities) reduce the likelihood they will be able to reach the norms associated with whiteness and ability and will be continually denied access to the benefits of both (Leonardo & Broderick, 2011).

Research can reinforce the valuing and inaccessibility of whiteness and ability when “readiness” and normalization (through standardized intervention and behavior management) remain the ultimate educational outcomes in early childhood settings. Justice-driven inclusive education research requires moving toward an examination of processes that reflect equitable learning opportunities and the values of multiply marginalized children and families. Justice-driven inclusive education research that takes up a DisCrit framework can more acutely identify the impacts of race- and ability-evasive materials, practices, and institutional processes as well as determine how to engage in race- and ability-inclusive practices to support multiply marginalized young children’s access to learning opportunities and belonging (component 1 of justice-driven inclusive education research).

Importantly, inclusive education and culturally responsive or antibias practices that benefit children of Color and those with dis/abilities have often come about and been upheld because they benefit white, en/abled, middle-class citizens, reflecting interest convergence. For example, to obtain buy-in from stakeholders in general education settings, advocates for inclusion often emphasize how inclusion benefits en/abled children, and should be implemented because it does not negatively impact en/abled children’s development (Gottfried, 2014; Szumski et al., 2017). While true, such arguments lose emphasis on the need for intersectional justice for young children experiencing marginalization. DisCrit helps deconstruct exclusionary structures and practices and envision inclusive processes without catering to the interests and norms of white, en/abled citizens, thereby potentially facilitating more extensive justice that truly addresses the unique abilities, values, and support needs of multiply marginalized young children and families (components 2 and 3 of justice-driven inclusive education research).

Multiply marginalized children’s acts of resistance and meaning-making have often been construed as challenging behavior and deficits that warrant intervention and exclusion (Collins, 2011; Migliarini & Annamma, 2020). Accordingly, inclusive education research has often examined and recommended practices that are intended to extinguish “challenging behavior” and assimilate children of Color and those with dis/abilities into dominant ability norms (Broderick & Leonardo, 2016; Dudley-Marling & Burns, 2014). As Migliarini and Annamma (2020) articulated, this is problematic because, when “appropriate” behavior is narrowly defined according to white, middle-class norms and any other behavior is construed as “challenging” or indicative of the need for intervention, it leaves children of Color with dis/abilities subject to exclusionary discipline. Such a pattern may be further compounded by the minimal consideration of race in behavior intervention research (Steed & Kranski, 2020).

As noted by this DisCrit tenet, children of Color with dis/abilities and their families intentionally act in the face of marginalization, and such actions should be respected as necessary communication to support justice efforts rather than simply targets for intervention. For example, Collins (2011) described how a Black child with perceived challenging behaviors engaged in literacy moves to confront deficit positioning and capitalize on self-identified strengths. Acknowledging such behaviors as intentional forms of participation, rather than disruptions, encourages innovative practice and counters deficit assumptions that hinder inclusive education. Similarly, families of Color often resist deficit positioning of their children by engaging in behaviors that are not traditionally recognized as parent involvement, such as refusing disability labeling and enacting culturally meaningful parenting (Kaomea, 2005; Lalvani, 2014; Waters, 2016). Understanding such acts as necessary family advocacy and engagement creates new avenues for family–professional partnerships supporting young children.

DisCrit recognizes acts of advocacy and resistance as necessary micro-level responses to macro-level oppression, which helps reimagine classroom spaces, practices, and partnership opportunities (Annamma et al., 2020; Migliarini & Annamma, 2020). Research that adopts a DisCrit lens to amplify the many ways multiply marginalized young children and their families resist dominant notions of normalcy can learn from the children and families about ways to redistribute resources, opportunities, and supports to align with their priorities and values (components 1 and 2 of justice-driven inclusive education research).