ELIZABETH STRINGER KEEFE
2022
This article proposes that special education teacher preparation programs’ systems and structures should be examined for ways they inadvertently contribute to oppressive educational conditions and negative or ableist perceptions of disability to ensure that such structures do not influence the lenses and practice of the teachers they produce. In this article, I theorize what I propose is “structural ableism,” which I define as “a complex system of hierarchical and discriminatory processes, policies, and institutions that privilege and prefer able-bodied people, fail to represent or meaningfully include disabled persons’ voices, and are grounded in a network of ableist beliefs and practices that maintain and reproduce unequal outcomes for disabled people and benefit able-bodied people.”
2022
Equity is invoked as a watchword in teacher education—a catch-all connected to an array of issues related to diversity, justice, or gaps in outcomes and opportunities for minoritized groups. This conceptual article argues that equity is often undefined and undertheorized in teacher education, and the complexities involved in addressing the structural inequalities of schooling are seldom acknowledged. The article unpacks recurring themes in the discourse of equity and teacher education. We suggest that in the teacher education discourse, equity appears frequently, but there is little attention to the structural and systemic policies that reproduce inequity in the first place. Second, we elaborate on the distinction between thin equity and strong equity, suggesting that this can be a powerful tool for clarifying, comparing, and critiquing the differences in meanings of equity. Third, we suggest that although thin conceptions of equity are prominent, some teacher education scholars and practitioners utilize stronger notions of equity in the work of teacher preparation.
