Disability as an Afterthought: Probing the Invisibility of Ability Differences in Interdisciplinary Advances in Learning

“Good Neighbors”: The Persistence and Consequences of Parallel Epistemic Cultures

There are at least two cultures in the study of learning, mostly differentiated by the target populations of students: one with disabilities and the other without disabilities. These two cultures have developed in parallel fashion over decades with some cross-fertilizations, each investing in unique forms of interdisciplinarity. The two cultures have behaved like “good neighbors,” greeting each other at a polite distance, although remaining detached to preserve autonomy. ²

Scholars studying learning with students with disabilities have been historically located in the special education field often partnering with colleagues from disciplines such as educational and cognitive psychology, psychiatry, genetics, and, more recently, neuroscience (Fletcher & Grigorenko, 2017; Grigorenko et al., 2020). These scholars have produced a substantial knowledge base on learning, especially on the acquisition and development of early literacy because most learners with mild disabilities exhibit difficulties in this domain. A substantial proportion of this research has been conducted in the context of multitiered systems of support where ostensibly, evidence-based practices are used to reduce racial disparities in disability identification and enhance equitable outcomes (Fien et al., 2021). Nevertheless, the evidence about the equity impact of these multilevel systems is still equivocal (Cavendish et al., 2016; Sabnis et al., 2019).

Lacking in this body of work, however, is the systematic integration of cognitive with social, emotional, and identity processes; moreover, a sociocultural paradigm has been underutilized in the special education field (Englert & Mariage, 2014; Lewis, 2017). These are serious shortcomings in this epistemic culture. Scholarship on learning involving students with disabilities does not engage the whole child, trace learning across contexts of everyday practices (in and out of school), or examine how learning is experienced as embodied and coordinated in interpersonal interactions (Artiles et al., 2022).

These faults can have substantial implications for students of color, who can be disproportionately identified with learning, intellectual, or behavioral disabilities. To this point, recent interdisciplinary learning research suggests that membership in minoritized groups places students in unique positions that can hamper their learning trajectories—that is, students of color

must manage environments that are not set up to meet one’s developmental needs and are designed to reinforce marginalization by not meeting developmental needs . . . [indeed, Black students and other students of color] are too often treated in school with suspicion, as the “other,” and are met with a profound lack of care. (Nasir et al., 2021, pp. 3–4)

In turn, the community studying learning with nondisabled students has evolved from relying on behavioral perspectives to relying on cognitive perspectives, including some integrations of these two models. Decades of this research produced substantial insights about human learning. But as we mentioned previously, recent research programs on learning are also accounting for sociocultural dimensions and, equally crucial, for the roles of identities loaded with historical and cultural baggage—specifically, race, ethnicity, gender, language, sexual orientation, social class. Despite the contributions of these interdisciplinary refinements, a significant omission has been a disregard for disability, which has a number of potentially negative consequences.

In brief, parallel epistemic cultures have coexisted and thrived over time. At the same time, these bodies of work are marked by deep flaws in their engagement with the idea of disability. One has drawn a map of learning with disabled populations that renders a partial view; a vision of learning that strips learners of critical aspects of their everyday learning experiences (e.g., social, cultural, emotional, identity dimensions). The other epistemic culture is enriching conceptions of learning to understand the whole child but keeps disabled individuals in the background. Next, we briefly discuss some of the forces that have contributed to the formation and maintenance of these parallel cultures.

The Formation of Parallel Epistemic Cultures: The End of Normal, Color Neutrality, and Harmful Ignorance

The existence of parallel cultures could be explained as a by-product of long-standing divisions of labor among disciplines. But we argue the formation of these cultures requires more complex explanations. How does the study of learning parcel out disability in some scholarly groups despite their interest in heterogeneity, culture, and contexts while another research community devoted to understanding how disabled students learn frames individuals as devoid of sociocultural identities, histories, and contexts?

Part of the answer is found in the shifting ideology of normality and the growing celebration of diversity. Diversity is the new normal—that is, “we are all ‘different’ therefore, we are all the same” (Davis, 2016, p. 13). Indeed, diversity has been a major driver in defining and sorting populations for several decades (Davis, 2016). This conception of diversity is enveloped in a neoliberal discourse in which personal choice and lifestyle play central roles. The trouble is, disability (like race) is regarded as an exception; it does not align with this view of diversity the way other identity markers do. It is conceived as unalterable, unrelated to choices in ways of life, all encompassing, necessitating lifelong interventions, and thus, veiling other identities (e.g., race). When the pressure to make disability-race intersections visible mounts—such as in the context of the racialization of disability—race is discernable through official racialized body counts by disability but vanishes in a poverty justification (Artiles, 2011). In other words, race is recognized (as a demographic marker) so that it can be de-recognized as “a structural system of group-based privileges and disadvantages produced by socio-historical forces” (Harris, 2001, p. 1758).

The morphing discourses of “normal” and the emergence of “diversity” as a master category might explain how research in general education can examine variability and heterogeneity in learning processes but still leave out the state of exception represented by disability. In turn, learning scholarship with disabled populations remains enclosed in a paradigm that essentializes disability and privileges a color-neutral vision of human development. Indeed, systematic reviews of research spanning decades in special education and psychology have documented the persistent illusion of a universal human being (i.e., White, male; Donovan & Cross, 2002; Graham, 1992; Lindo, 2006; Moore & Klingner, 2012; Syed et al., 2018; Trent et al., 2014; Vasquez et al., 2011). This is indexed not only in the kinds of research questions and sample descriptions dominating reports but also in data analysis procedures (Artiles, 2022). In the special education epistemic culture, the structural weight of historical injustices is deleted; thus, “disproportionate poverty, wealth, physical well-being, and life expectancy only happen to correlate with . . . racial identity as a result of neutral sorting and choice” (Harris, 2001, pp. 1773–1774).

It is neither sustainable nor morally viable to preserve these parallel cultures at a point in history in which intergenerational inequalities are deepening. These inequities disproportionately impact minoritized groups precisely at a time when categories of difference ³ (not diversity) now constitute fast-growing numerical majorities in multiple geographical regions and in most of the largest school districts in the nation. Maintaining color-neutral ideologies in any epistemic culture will only ensconce what has been described in medicine as “harmful ignorance”:

Ignorance is neither neutral nor benign, especially when it cloaks evidence of harm. And when ignorance is produced and entrenched by gatekeeper medical institutions, as has been the case with obfuscation of at least 200 years of knowledge about racism and health, the damage is compounded. (Krieger et al., 2021)

Harmful ignorance permeates all dimensions of epistemic cultures, from research training to knowledge production and dissemination practices. The epistemic cultures we discuss in this chapter must correct and purposefully avoid harmful ignorance. Disabled individuals experience racial (and other forms of) harm, particularly if they are members of minoritized groups. This happens in general education and special education contexts. A robust theory of learning must be informed by this fact.

Moving Forward

The persistence of parallel epistemic cultures in the study of learning poses significant challenges to researchers and has considerable implications for learners with disabilities. We mention two due to space constraints. The most urgent implication is to interrupt the parallel nature of these epistemic cultures. Incentives must be created to support teams that systematically integrate scholars across this divide. Boundary crossing will be needed even though this might bring risks and consequences due to pressures to maintain the status and cohesion of siloed scientific paradigms and the prejudices applied to individuals that do not acquiesce (Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 1983). This is particularly unsettling for early career and/or minoritized scholars. A recommendation was recently made to begin addressing this epistemic divide. Specifically, the proposal is to pursue a paradigm expansion in the study of learning with disabled students through the creation of “trading zones” in which scholars from disciplines on both sides of the divide (and beyond) collaborate to study learning with disabled students (Artiles et al., 2022). “Galison developed the notion of trading zones into a powerful metaphor for the exchanges that occur among specialists working on various aspects of microphysics in the twentieth century” (Long, 2015, p. 841). Thus, a first step would be to convene scholars with disparate disciplinary expertise to create “productive possibilities at the intersection of, even misunderstanding among, heterogeneous actors” (Lewis & Usher, 2016, p. 546). Scholars from disparate parallel epistemic cultures can embrace a contrapuntal perspective (Artiles, 2013) through participation in routine collaborative work on a topic of learning to begin mapping potential points of contact across their disciplinary expertise not yet readily visible. These routine contacts will likely highlight the disjunctions of individual perspectives and therefore, illuminate the spaces, silences, and overlaps among alternative understandings of learning. Consistent with a contrapuntal stance, a crucial demand for scholars participating in trading zones is to focus not only on what they are examining—learning research—but also how to examine this topic—specifically, the “intertwined and overlapping histories” of disability intersections with race, gender, social class, language, and national origin (Said, 1993, p. 18).

Second, a nuanced intersectional lens is urgently needed to integrate disability considerations in learning research across both epistemic cultures. This is particularly important for the special education community due to what we call its “intersectional aversive logic” (Tefera & Artiles, 2023). Although some disability definitions call attention to linguistic, socioeconomic, and other forms of difference, a unitary approach has dominated this literature in which ability differences are foregrounded and intersections with other identities are confined to lists of demographic variables (Artiles, 2013). In turn, as we explained, the scholarship emerging in the learning sciences does account for multiple intersections, except for disability.

Special education learning scholarship must engage structural and political intersectionalities (Crenshaw, 1991). Identities (e.g., race, gender, social class, disability) occupy distinct hierarchical locations in social contexts and society. Although disability is a difference marker loaded with stigma that pushes people to the margins, we cannot assume that the intersections of disability with racial groups will produce comparable experiences for people living with various permutations of these intersections. In other words, because race creates asymmetrical access to resources, social status, and power (Harris, 2001), we must anticipate that a White male student with a disability will experience labels and special education services in qualitatively different ways than a Black girl with a disability. In short, to assume that racialized students experience symmetrical treatment in the social and institutional contexts of general and special education that are inherently asymmetrical only perpetuates injustices (Harris, 2001). Learning research must account for the mediating roles of these structural intersections, perhaps starting with basic steps such as the disaggregation of evidence by groups and subgroups (Lindo, 2006).

Similarly, the notion of political intersectionality reminds us that individuals may embody intersections located “within at least two subordinated groups that frequently pursue conflicting political agendas. The need to split one’s political energies between two sometimes-opposing groups is a[n additional] dimension of intersectional disempowerment” (Crenshaw 1991, p. 360). To illustrate, racial minoritized groups have historically fought for equal treatment in society, whereas people with disabilities sought differential responses to their needs. What tensions and contradictions would these political intersectionalities create for Black and Brown students with disabilities and their families as they struggle for an individualized education and fight for racial integration? How would learning opportunities be affected by these tensions, and how do we account for these political intersectionalities in the study of learning when working with students inhabiting alternative intersections? These and other related questions can guide a new generation of learning research that addresses the shortcomings of these epistemic cultures. Beyond the recognition or inclusion of static categories (e.g., recruiting racialized or disabled students in samples), future studies should be framed to capture the dynamic, cultural-historical nature of learning at the intersections of disability with other difference markers. We should note that we are considering research within and beyond learning in academic domains. For instance:

In conclusion, we believe that to truly engage in research that will generate robust equity-driven and culturally informed knowledge about learning relevant to students with disabilities, the two epistemic cultures we have described must transcend neighborships in which ambiguity rules and a primary goal, spoken or unspoken, is to sustain a spurious harmony. We must advance research programs that broaden the unit of analysis from individual children and youth with and without disabilities to the wider cultural and historical spaces wherein they learn.