ABSTRACT
This chapter claims disability as a form of human diversity integral to social justice education and multicultural curricula. Using Disability Studies (DS), we confront widespread misconceptions and stereotypes about how disability is conceived in relation to social judgments of human difference. We then relate these notions of difference to implications for education and social justice pedagogy. First, we look at limiting, oppressive conceptualizations of disability that circulate within the dominant discourse of special education. Second, we briefly narrate the origins of DS, and its development of the social model(s) that radically reconceptualized disability. Third, we focus on the value of Disability Studies in Education (DSE) in unlearning pervasive, damaging stereotypes in order to rethink and reteach disability. Fourth, we sample DSE in action. In closing, we make a case for interdisciplinary research and pedagogy, and focus on the growth of DSE as a tool to be used by all social justice educators.
