Interdisciplinary Inequality Research in the E/BD Field: Animating Intersectionality,Reflexivity,and Equity

This journal special issue pursues an ambitious agenda. The authors situate scholarship on emotional/behavioral disorders (E/BD) in the context of educating students of color. A premise of this project is that attention to race in the E/BD field must be grounded in an interdisciplinary ecological vision of human development. The decision to position the E/BD scholarship in conversation with race and a systemic developmental paradigm constitutes a profound departure from the canon in this field. But perhaps the most consequential (re)positioning of this project is the application of an equity prism. Indeed, inequalities have a prominent place in the history of E/BD. The marginalization and segregation of this population is long-standing and entanglements with race persist to this day. Equally significant, the authors refuse to engage race and equity as mere technical matters devoid of cultural, historical, and ideological sedimentations. Instead, the authors assume that racial and equity issues in the E/BD field are interwoven with broader sociohistorical considerations. This is a fundamental conceptual shift, and for this reason, I unpack its significance and repercussions before I turn to the special issue contributions.

There are patterns in the fabric of American society that are uncritically regarded as “normal” facts. An enduring instance is inequality and its various manifestations—for example, higher poverty levels, lower levels of educational attainment, health disparities and higher rates of disciplinary sanctions, special education identification, and incarceration among people of color (Artiles, 2015; Bobo, 2011). Despite a plethora of interdisciplinary evidence about the historical and structural antecedents of these patterns and mounting data on the steady rise of inequalities associated with these “facts,” we are witnessing a growing preference for a deficit language to describe communities of color (Artiles, 2015). Notions historically used to represent communities of color, such as “cultural disadvantage,” “cultural deprivation,” and “culturalist hypotheses,” are re-gaining currency (Darity, 2011).

The story of “othering” communities of color has morphed over time, but the common denominator has been the unremitting presence of a deficit trope. Paradigmatic cases are the study of racial, gender, and linguistic disparities in discipline and disability identification (Skiba et al., 2008), particularly in the categories of E/BD, intellectual disabilities, and learning disabilities (Artiles et al., 2016). An illustration of this deficit stance is indexed in a recent review of research on systemic bias in the overrepresentation of students of color. Morgan et al. (2018) acknowledged that minoritized students’ greater exposure to factors that increase disability identification odds are due to the “country’s historical and ongoing oppression and marginalization of racial and ethnic minorities” (p. 262). But next, the authors’ reasoning shifted to a deficit framing—first, by privileging individual-centered factors that disproportionately affect students of color: “being born with very low birth weight, exposure to lead in the environment, experiencing poverty and the toxic stress resulting from chronic exposure to multiple risk factors” (p. 262); second, the authors did not connect these factors to the historical and structural factors acknowledged earlier in their paper. In other words, their argument reads as if these patterns and threat exposures are natural occurrences in the experiences of people of color. Moreover, the authors argued that the systemic bias hypothesis to explain overrepresentation should account for the key role of academic achievement in disability identification and for the fact that achievement is “correlated with race, ethnicity, and language use” (p. 262). In this way, the authors’ reasoning remained fixated on individual factors and then used a tautological logic by connecting low academic achievement with exposure to the aforementioned threats:

In addition to strongly predicting the likelihood of disability identification . . . individual-level academic achievement correlates with exposure to factors that increase the risk for disability but that are typically unobserved (e.g., phenylketonuria or other genetic disorders, low birth weight, fetal alcohol syndrome, maternal smoking and substance abuse, lead exposure during infancy and early childhood) by professionals making school-based special education eligibility determinations as well as by educational researchers. (Morgan et al., 2018, p. 263)

In this example of contemporary deficit framing, the authors nod at the presence of oppression and marginalization that people of color have suffered historically, but disability racial disparities are blamed on students of color because they have low achievement and damaged bodies and families (e.g., genetic disorders, maternal alcohol, and drug abuse). In fact, some of these authors made their deficit thesis more explicit elsewhere when critiquing the use of the “racial risk ratio for special education.” To wit: “This ratio is typically reported without adjustment for the possibility that minority and White students may have different rates of clinical needs” (Farkas & Morgan, 2018, p. 72).

In brief, a deficit framing has permeated the traditional scholarship on disability intersections with race and other difference markers (Artiles et al., 2010). This work regards students of color as damaged and construes disparities in academic achievement as a neutral notion. Stated differently, opportunity gaps, differential access to quality curricula and to well-prepared professionals, assessment biases, and other contextual and structural factors have no bearing on academic achievement disparities. Of significance, the emphasis on an individual unit of analysis and the exclusive reliance on technical explanations devoid of history and context are hallmarks of this traditional work. As Mehan (1993) reminded us,

[i]ndividualism and technical knowledge constitute two of the most important dimensions of a psychological account of human behavior. [These] dimensions are readily apparent in the discourse that dominates special education selections. Thus, there is a strong affinity between the idiom that predominates educational discourse and a dominant metaphor in American society. Both cite personal and individual characteristics as the basis of success and failure. Both rely on technical knowledge and expertise in decision making. (p. 265)

The oversimplified view of racial disparities in educational performance, school discipline sanctions, and special education identification ignores decades of interdisciplinary research on these and other related inequalities (DiPrete & Fox-Williams, 2021; Donovan & Cross, 2002; Harry & Klingner, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 2006) and flies in the face of the racial reckoning that scientific communities and society at large are grappling with in the second decade of the 21st century.

Consistent with this historical backdrop, the E/BD scholarship has been largely framed with an individual unit of analysis. Although advances have been made in our understanding of E/BD, much work is still needed to engage systematically the roles of contexts, history, and equity. Some work on behavioral supports and inclusive models represents efforts to account for contextual and organizational dimensions, but theoretical and methodological refinements are urgently needed. Equity considerations have been underspecified or oversimplified (Skiba et al., 2016). Furthermore, a deficit perspective permeates many contributions in the E/BD field. As the special issue contributors suggest, this research community needs to adopt reflexivity as a standard practice to critique and refine the “framings” used in the production of E/BD knowledge. This means we must recognize that the history of E/BD scholarship is not monolithic. There are, in fact, histories of E/BD scholarship distributed across general and special education, psychology, philosophy, the history of ideas, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, among others. A missed opportunity is the lack of systematic efforts to cross-pollinate insights across these scholarly communities. To a significant extent, the manuscripts in this special issue animate these epistemological requirements (i.e., self-critique, interdisciplinary re-framings, explicit engagements with equity) to inspire the next generation of E/BD research.

A starting point for this worthy agenda is to broaden the notion of human development that informs E/BD research. Behavioral and cognitive models have governed this scholarship with an emphasis on individual traits. As an alternative, Farmer, Serpell, Scott, DeVlieger, Brooks, and Hamm (this issue) integrate a developmental and ecological systems perspective that conceptualizes human development as dynamic and interdependent with contexts. Institutional climate and cultural mediators such as family and neighborhood characteristics (including social links with peers and adults), community participation, and resources shape the ecologies of individual development at home and school. Farmer et al. explain this constellation of influences constitutes “a dynamic system of correlated constraints that collectively and coactively contribute to students’ sense of belonging, their overall adjustment, and their long-term outcomes.” Of note, this framework explicitly recognizes the role of oppression in the production of E/BD in a stratified society. For the reasons stated above, this is a consideration sorely needed in the E/BD field. A key implication of this perspective is that it compels researchers to do situated analyses of behaviors as embedded in structural dimensions. It will be consequential to animate this multiscale analytical tradition in the E/BD field and benefit from the uses of this prism in various social sciences (e.g., sociology, cultural psychology, anthropology; Packer & Cole, 2020). On the contrary, Farmer et al. outline the potential of this work within the structures of Multi-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). Questions to consider include the following: Are the foundational assumptions of MTSS regarding student learning, development, and school organizations aligned with the premises of their developmental framework? If not, what alternative structures would be needed?

A complementary ecological perspective is offered by Collins, Coleman, and Grantham though their focus is a unique population, namely, students with gifts and emotional/behavioral challenges—that is, twice exceptional (2e). Collins et al. base their proposed model on a critique of gifted and special education associated with the legacies of deficit thinking, the influence of the eugenics movement with its attendant narrow conception of intelligence, the lack of attention to opportunity gaps, the role of colorblind ideologies shaping knowledge production, and the reprehensible impact of racism (see Note 1). Aligned with a core theme of this special edition, Collins et al. set gifted and special education in a more complex understanding of contextual and historical influences as they explain that “[w]hile poverty is clearly one factor that undermines wellbeing, racism contributes another layer of challenge for students of color and their families.” This is reflected in persistent racial disparities in gifted and special education. Collins and her colleagues remind us that these historical patterns are not mere data abstractions but rather percolate down to microprocesses of everyday school encounters affecting critical mediating forces such as trust between educators and students of color. In response to this state of affairs, Collins et al. propose a strength-based and bioecological paradigm that accounts for students of color’s ingenuity in the face of adversity that endows them with compensatory skills and dispositions. The authors also assign a central role to intersectionality and students’ multifaceted identity processes—Recent developments integrating identity, culture, and human development would offer useful complementarities to this work (Artiles, 2015; Nasir et al., 2012). Finally, Collins and her colleagues weave these ideas in the realm of a culturally responsive MTSS that offers a more dynamic approach to the provision of learning support services.

In turn, Riley and Serpell (this issue) position E/BD in the history of inequalities in U.S. education. They critique the racist institutional ecologies of schools that impose barriers for the design and implementation of learning environments. Based (in part) on the assessment of educators’, administrators’, and mental health providers’ (counselors, social workers, intervention specialists) perceptions of the relative importance and feasibility of interventions for African American adolescents with E/BD, Riley and Serpell map cultural, ecological, and developmental considerations for a socially just education. Their framing includes redistributing power and privilege to lift African American student voice and agency, and designing learning environments that build on students’ assets and cultural experiences, strong connections with teachers, and collaborative problem solving in the context of restorative justice strategies. A strength of this article is that E/BD intersections with other markers of difference (including race) are regarded as an essential analytic requirement in E/BD knowledge production.

Blake, Jackson, Ruffin, Salter, Li, Banks, and Williams (this issue) contributed a study on the role of teacher race and discipline philosophy in school discipline decisions targeting African American girls. The study advances an intersectional analysis of discipline disparities through simulations that experimentally manipulated infraction type, student race, student developmental status (pre- or postpubertal stage), and teacher race. Educators reported their discipline philosophy and their chosen discipline sanctions. Blake et al. found that teacher race and philosophy influenced the severity of discipline decisions, though with an intriguing twist, that is, White and African American teachers issued more severe discipline decisions than teachers from other races. In addition, teachers who endorsed a punitive discipline philosophy issued more severe sanctions, irrespective of student race or type of infraction. Consistent with the themes of this special issue, this study reiterates the importance of an intersectional framing and the necessity of foregrounding the role of race and cultural influences (teacher philosophies) in investigations of equity problems in the E/BD field. The findings also raise stimulating questions for future research on discipline disparities. Rich contextualized studies can illuminate some of these questions. Let us consider, for instance, the role of student self-determination in classroom encounters (Davis et al., 2020). “What are children’s micro acts of self-determination accomplishing relationally and intellectually?” (Davis et al., 2020, p. 2). How do teachers’ philosophies mediate their interpretations of students’ self-determination efforts in ambiguous classroom situations that could lead to disciplinary infractions? Davis et al. (2020) explained that “children’s everyday forms of self-determination are much more than individual acts; they emerge from social histories and carry future potentialities that shape learning and intellectual life within, and sometimes beyond, the setting” (p. 2). I wonder, what is the role of teacher and student racial storylines (Nasir et al., 2012) when negotiating student self-determination actions during classroom events that may rapidly morph into disciplinary encounters?

The preceding manuscripts represent a frame-shifting perspective. This is a critically important strategy for the evolution of research programs. Frame-shifting investigations can offer descriptive insights as well as information about the causes of phenomena. These studies can motivate deliberations about alternative descriptions and causes of phenomena and refine a knowledge base. Frame-shifting studies are rare in the E/BD field, though essential for the study of inequalities associated with disability intersections, “in part [because there is a potential to] reorient . . . political [and scholarly] debates away from the position that inequality is the fault of individuals or the logical consequence of individual differences” (DiPrete & Fox-Williams, 2021, p. 4). I should note, however, that frame-shifting research needs to be complemented with investigations that illuminate potential pathways of change (DiPrete & Fox-Williams, 2021).

The article by Huguley et al. offers possibilities for pathways of change in the context of restorative justice interventions. The authors not only acknowledge the potential of restorative justice but also call attention to the mixed evidence about its impact, particularly in relation to racial disparities. Huguley et al. challenge restorative justice interventions to incorporate socioemotional and mental health mediators. They further contend that restorative justice models must account for the structural and relational weights of race and racism in socioemotional development and thus should broaden its analytical focus to include the role of institutional and cultural contexts. The role of racial storylines in the formation of student identities can enrich this work (Nasir et al., 2012). Student identity plays a crucial role in learning as it promotes or interferes with student engagement in learning environments (Nasir et al., 2012). Racial storylines are pervasive in society (including schools) and contribute to the discourses of race formations. These storylines enable individuals to “make sense of race and how they appropriate and deploy race to position themselves and others in everyday activity” (Nasir et al., 2012, p. 289). Racial storylines often embody negative representations of students of color and socialize them into conceptions of race and schooling encompassing a wide array of areas and topics—for example, intellectual and physical ability, and work ethic. These storylines circulate and are acted upon in schools, thus “making certain racial and academic identities more or less available and, thus, opening up or closing down opportunities to engage as a learner” (Nasir et al., 2012, p. 288). The opportunity here is to document the mediating roles of racial storylines and identity formation processes in the contexts of restorative justice. Important questions to raise include the following: What is the role of racial storylines in discipline incidents? What identity negotiations take place in such events? and How can educators interrupt and re-frame negative racial storylines that trigger discipline incidents in the context of restorative justice interventions?

A second instance with potential to illuminate pathways of change is the work of Bettini, Scott, Brunsting, Kaler, Moore, O’Brien, and Cuming on the working conditions of special education teachers of color serving students with E/BD. Understanding the working conditions of teachers is critical due to its association with retention. Moreover, the focus on teachers of color is imperative considering this literature has been largely color evasive (Bettini et al., this issue). Attention to teacher race is potentially impactful given the significant representation of African American and Latinx learners in E/BD (Sullivan, 2017) and the fact that teachers of color can have a significant influence on minoritized students’ achievement (Bettini et al., this issue). Bettini et al. focus on malleable factors—that is, working conditions, teacher assignments, diversification of study samples—and thus, their line of research opens new opportunities for changing inequalities impinging upon learners of color with E/BD. The authors reported that special education teachers of color provided significantly lower ratings in emotional support from colleagues and perception of school culture. These results converge with previous studies documenting how special education teachers of color endure racial biases and microaggressions, thus impacting their sense of self-worth (Bettini et al.). These insights remind the E/BD field of the importance of race relations in schools as a key element in the organization of learning opportunities for E/BD students of color. An intriguing finding from this study is that teachers of color reported a significantly higher level of autonomy than their White counterparts—Future studies should examine closely the contextual contingencies associated with this pattern.

To conclude, the architecture of this special issue pushes the boundaries of the E/BD canonical narrative. The use of cultural lenses in the study of child and youth development while accounting for the stratified nature of society is urgently needed in the E/BD field. Another essential idea is that (similar to judges) researchers are epistemological gatekeepers (Jasanoff, 2018) for they determine “which . . . claims are entitled to consideration . . . or not, thereby privileging certain ways of knowing above others” (p. 16). These authors challenge researchers in the E/BD field to exercise this power by crafting new kinds of research questions and enriching the methods deployed to gather data and the theories applied to filter research evidence. The re-framings offered across papers invite the E/BD field to create heteroglossic communities (Bakhtin, 1981) in which complementary worldviews of student behaviors and emotions coexist and nurture distinct representational practices. The current moment defined by a global pandemic that has made visible deepening historical inequalities calls for a moral commitment in the E/BD field to engage the core ideas and themes represented in this special issue.