ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to build on the model for critical disabilities within a teacher education/special education context to capture the voices of individuals who were already "doing the work" within disability studies. The status quo structure of special education/teacher education has sometimes created difficulty in the implementation of critical disability studies work within the field. The education of students with disabilities has traditionally relied on positivistic, medicalised framings of disability which are perpetuated in special education/ teacher education programmes as well as K–12 schools. The content that teachers are exposed to daily facilitates many opportunities to question and re-examine existing practices within education. Applying prejudice reduction to teacher education, candidates would be expected to participate in conversations in class that create tensions around race and culture, requiring them to learn about differences in deeper, more meaningful ways. Equity pedagogy, like culturally relevant pedagogy, suggests that teachers tailor their instruction to respond to individual learners' cultures, races, genders and socioeconomic groups.
