ANTI-ABLEISM

Slee (2022) describes how deeply embedded ableism is within school systems, and calls for an audit of ableism at every level for a better understanding of how and where ableism operates and to reject and resist ongoing ableist harm. Yu (2024)’s Anti Ableist Manifesto describes multiple facets of foundational understanding of disability and steps towards becoming more anti-ableist. In this study, anti-ableism and models of disability are used to bring perspective and awareness to mindsets around disability and ableism. 

Medical model of disability 

The medical model of disability focuses on disability as an inherent deficit within an individual that requires diagnosis and treatment. Walker’s (2021a) pathology paradigm extends this logic into a worldview that assumes human brains have one "right," "normal," or "healthy" way of functioning, which pathologizes neurodivergence and upholds white, cishet, ableist norms. Walker stresses the importance of rejecting the pathology paradigm, calling it inherently ableist and “institutionalized bigotry masquerading as science” (p.129). 

Yu (2024) outlines several disability models that operate within the medical model, which helped me conceptualize the specific, varied ways ableism is reinforced. These include the tragedy models of disability (inspirational and charity), the economic model, and the moral model. The tragedy model views disability as a tragedy and disabled people as victims or objects of pity, resulting in reactive, top-down approaches that try to “save” an individual (charity model) or put them on a pedestal (inspirational model). The economic model defines disability through productivity, valuing individuals solely based on their capacity to contribute economically. The moral model views disability as a punishment for wrongdoing. Individuals are seen as at fault for their disability, or that challenges occur due to them not trying hard enough. In all of these instances, the individual is viewed as at fault.

Traces of medical model-thinking and its implications can be seen across marginalized communities. Nott and Schwartz (2025) describe dehumanization as a process where individuals are perceived as “less than human” and are viewed as “unfamiliar, dissimilar, unintelligent, inarticulate, cold, and incompetent” (p. 1096). Tying one’s worth to the ability to work, seeing individuals as deserving of their situation, and objectifying individuals as pitiful or tragic stories play out through dehumanization. When dehumanization is the underlying belief system, discrimination and mistreatment become justified (Nott & Schwartz, 2025). In this way, disability models offer a useful lens for understanding how other groups are similarly oppressed and dehumanized.

When dehumanizing and pathologizing beliefs circulate in school systems, students get blamed for their circumstances. This blame is used to rationalize their marginalization and naturalizes the idea that some students will always be “behind,” “dependent,” or “unworthy investments”. The medical model is the foundation of special education as an institution, where students are assessed and categorized by designation. Inclusive education demands anti-ableism. Abelism runs rampant within schooling systems, and ableist mindsets continue these cycles of discrimination. An anti-ableist praxis includes identifying and dismantling ableism and simultaneously building from the social and affirmative models of disability.

Social Model of Disability. This worldview stemmed in response to the dehumanizing experiences from the medical model of disability. If the medical model views disability as something to be fixed within the individual, the social model shifts the focus to barriers in the environment that need to be fixed. The concept of barriers is crucial to the social model. Barriers are sometimes physical, such as an inaccessible classroom layout or restrooms. They can also be social or attitudinal, like when teachers or peers assume a student is less capable or "disruptive". Barriers can be curricular when they do not account for different modes of representation, engagement, or expression. Institutional barriers show up as gatekeeping resources and supports for students who have access to a medical diagnosis, or when the responsibility is put on students and families to advocate for themselves. The social model in inclusive education emphasizes the identification and removal of these barriers. 

Affirmative Model of Disability. Self-advocates affirm that disability is not a bad word (Yu, 2024). Sure, etymologically, "dis"-"ability" connotes inability. In a similar sense, "queer" connotes peculiarity. However, queer communities have reclaimed this word as an embodied identity. Origins of words cannot be changed, but communities have every right to reclaim what words mean to them. For instance, self-advocate, Lachi (as cited in Yu, 2024), notes that not all words that start with "dis" are inherently negative. For example, discovery or discussion. Disability can be reframed through a neutral lens, one that resists the dehumanization of "lesser than". The affirmative model recognizes disability as a valued identity grounded in disabled people’s lived experience and disability culture. It asserts that disabled life is inherently meaningful and worthy, and that disabled people do not need to justify their value through inclusion in non-disabled norms.

ANTI-RACISM

Inclusion demands anti-ableism, and inclusion demands anti-racism. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a revolutionary movement and anti-racist framework founded by legal scholars, including Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, and Richard Delgado, to develop methods of analyzing and challenging racism (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). Although, as Solórzano and Yosso (2001) point out, written conceptualizations of CRT start as early as 1903 with DuBois’ (1903) work, The Souls of Black Folk. CRT has expanded to include scholarship such as InCrit, TribalCrit, DisCrit, LatCrit, FemCrit, AsianCrit, and more. Specifically, CRT involves the following tenets: (a) counterstorytelling, (b) the permanence of racism, (c) Whiteness as property, (d) interest convergence, and (e) the critique of liberalism (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). 

In thinking about the CRT tenet of counterstorytelling and its alignment with Disability Justice’s principle of leadership of those most impacted (Sins Invalid, 2016), critical counterstorytelling engages narratives from marginalized communities that challenge dominant norms, particularly those with intersecting experiences of oppression. Intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991), was developed in response to the essentialism imposed on Black women’s experiences of marginalization. Watson (2022) points to a parallel erasure; Indigenous communities are seldom acknowledged for their contributions, despite their leadership, intellectual contributions, and storytelling as fundamental to Indigenous cultures. One way she challenges this erasure is through “speculative biography” (p. 101), which works to reconstruct the lives of Indigenous women by turning to oral, community, and archival histories. Her approach aligns with and expands counterstorytelling as acts of care, “through telling their stories, we may begin to heal from the grave injustices of the past, and start to see injustices of the present through new lenses” (p. 102).

hooks (1994) affirms concerns of essentialist theories and practices that use identity as a form of authority or coercion. At the same time, she cautions that a binary shift from essentialism to anti-essentialism can erase the ways that structures specific to racism, sexism, and classism. She argues that critiques of essentialism can become a new way to silence marginalized students by dismissing the significance of their experiences. She writes that “biases imposed by essentialist standpoints or identity politics, alongside those perspectives that insist that experience has no place in the classroom (both stances can create an atmosphere of coercion and exclusion), must be interrogated by pedagogical practices” (p. 86).

Ladson-Billings & Tate (1995) introduced CRT to education, and contextualized the tenet of “whiteness as property” in education. Because affluent, predominantly white communities have higher property values, thus higher tax assessments, they are able to fund “better” schools. In this context, white property functions as access to certified and prepared teachers, science labs, computers, new technology, a variety of courses available, extra-curricular activities, athletic equipment, and curriculum. Ladson- Billings & Tate (1995) argue that rigorous curriculum has been almost exclusively enjoyed by white students (tracking, honors, gifted programs). 

Ewing (2025) argues that manifestations of racial hierarchy in education is part of the "Race Machine", and that schools help to keep the Race Machine running; "school is one of the laboratories where the Race Machine and its technologies have been developed, honed, perfected, and maintained, generating the steam that makes the engine go" (p.18-19).
The multicultural paradigm, as Ladson-Billings & Tate (1995) argue, is a reform movement designed for multicultural equality that frequently trivializes and reduces cultures down to things like “eating ethnic or cultural foods, singing songs or dancing, reading folktales” (p.61), and strips the context in service of celebrating a sanitized and nonrepresentative, palatable version of that culture.

DISCRIT

For too long, systems of oppression have been treated as separate, siloed problems. DisCrit is an intersectional analysis that explores racism and ableism as interlocking oppressions (Annamma et al., 2018). DisCrit has informed analyses of ableism's and racism's roots in colonialism and capitalism. Annamma et al. (2018) proposes tenets that interrogate interactions between ableism and racism-- that they are interdependent, can circulate in neutralised and invisible ways, they uphold notions of normalcy, legal and historical aspects, and that they hold material impacts despite race and ability being socially constructed. DisCrit emphasizes the role of colonialism and capitalism, stating that DisCrit requires resistance and activism. This lens is important because it exposes the legal and historical ways that disability and race have been weaponized to justify systemic segregation and dehumanization. It also explicitly states the difference between race and ability as social constructs and the material impacts of racism and ableism. Before the introduction of DisCrit, race and disability were largely analyzed separately. DisCrit weaves together anti-racism and anti-ableism to demonstrate that racism and ableism actively rely on each other to function.

INCRIT

 By cross-pollinating frameworks like DisCrit, Critical Race Theory, and Disability Justice, InCrit provides the necessary lens to interrogate how interlocking systems of oppression hoard learning opportunities for those who do not fit the mythical “normal” student (Cruz et al, 2024). The core of InCrit rests on two tenets: variability as an asset; relevant, rigorous, and responsive learning. The first tenet recognizes that human variability is the norm and a strength to be leveraged. The second tenet operationalizes this by insisting on critically inclusive pedagogy that is rigorous, relevant, and responsive. It explicitly rejects rote, decontextualized instruction and false inclusions. InCrit weaves together Disability Justice scholarship (Sins Invalid, 2016), Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Crenshaw, 1991; DuBois, 1903), and critical disability theory in education (Annamma et al., 2013, 2018). This framework demands the dismantling of the systems that justify exclusion based on perceived deficits. 

Cruz et al. (2024) identify recurring patterns of practices that claim to be “inclusion” but ultimately maintain normativity and perpetuate exclusion. They name these patterns “false instantiations of inclusion”: physical, contingent, and differential. 

Physical inclusion. When inclusion is reduced to students being physically present in the same classroom, this is not inclusion. Giangreco (2021) agrees with this notion, describing the concept of Maslow’s hammer: if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail; if the only tool the system has is a paraprofessional, then every inclusion challenge looks like a support-staffing issue. In practice, students are frequently assigned one-on-one paraprofessionals as the default solution, systematically reinforcing dependency on paraprofessionals and reproducing segregation in the name of physical inclusion (Giangreco, 2021; Suter & Giangreco, 2009). Physical inclusion assumes that the education system is functioning without flaw, and the aim is to include individual students.

Contingent Inclusion. Contingent “inclusion” frames inclusion as contingent on student behavior. Under this logic, a student can only be a member of the classroom if they conform to a set of standards. This set of standards is often restrictive and oppressive, but is justified through behaviors considered disruptive or challenging, as well as learning/care needs deemed “unmeetable” (Cruz et al., 2024; Naraian, 2019). These students are then removed from general education classrooms to segregated settings, punitive discipline rooms, or expelled. Naraian (2019) argues that this contingency creates “temporal othering,” where students who cannot navigate fast, rigid school schedules are marginalized because they cannot meet normative temporal demands, and are only granted access to the present classroom environment under the expectation that they will eventually be "fixed".

Differential Inclusion. Although differential learning is often promoted in teacher education as a central strategy for inclusion, research highlights significant concerns: dependence on levelled learning expectations, reduction of rigor and critical thinking, and uses of deficit framings of students and their families.

Neuroqueering

I thought that was the extent of the theoretical lenses, but I could not help but reflect on my specific experiences of marginalization in schooling. The cost of masking. The cost of being closeted. My teen years were full of longing, self-loathing, self-rejection, and deep feelings of inadequacy. At the time, I felt unauthentic in my body. I spent a great deal of time researching the latest makeup, fashion, social media, and music trends. My fear of rejection and self-doubt consumed me at times. I engaged in suicidal behavior. I developed an eating disorder. I had a constant self-critic analyzing my every move. When students show up at school, this pain does not stop. In fact, for me, that is when I felt these pressures most intensely. There is a wide array of causes and reasoning behind my mental health at this time that extend beyond my marginalized identities. However, I found profound solace when I began to embrace my queer and neurodivergent identities. I am learning to hold these tensions, that my privileges do not negate my suffering, my suffering does not negate my privileges. Coming across Walker’s (2021) work felt like a gold mine that resonated deeply with my experiences. 

The neurodiversity paradigm (Walker, 2021) is grounded in the biological fact that neurodiversity, or the infinite variation in human minds, is a natural, healthy, and valuable form of human diversity. There is no "normal" or "right" human mind that exists, just like there is no "normal" ethnicity or gender. This paradigm recognizes that the concept of a "normal mind" is a culturally constructed fiction used to establish hierarchies of dominance. 

Neuroqueer theory (Walker, 2021) extends this paradigm as a practice of subverting, disrupting, and liberating oneself from both neuronormativity and heteronormativity. This theory recognizes that the embodied performance of being neurocognitively "normal" is inseparable from heteronormative gender roles; therefore, queering one queers the other. Unlike essentialist views that categorize individuals, neuroqueer perspectives treat the mind and body as fluid canvases for ongoing creative experimentation. It allows individuals to reclaim their capacity for uniquely weird expression by undoing cultural conditioning and reclaiming identities.

Neuroqueer theory adds a layer of nuance to InCrit’s first tenet, variability as an asset, by explicitly addressing neurodivergence and queerness, and viewing variability as a site of resistance against a colonial school system. As an interpretive lens for this study, neuroqueer theory allows me to analyze my history as a performance of neurotypicality and heteronormativity. This practice serves as a bridge between the movements of "queering" and "cripping" (Barkved, 2021). 

Cripping is a method of intentionally challenging the normative expectations about how a body or a mind should work. The language of cripping is meant to serve as a shock because the word itself has discriminatory and derogative origins. I still find a sense of discomfort using this word. However, I am guided by disability communities who reclaim it use that discomfort and shock to force a realization that society is built only for a specific type of mind and body. For example, Price & Kerschbaum (2016) embrace crip time, an understanding that disabled communities move through time differently, by allowing interviews to "shape-shift" into year-long email exchanges or pausing when energy levels were low. They also challenged the power of the direct gaze; for instance, one researcher knitted to manage mental energy during sessions. Cripping is a deliberate political act. Neuroqueering and cripping reject the normative pressure to assimilate into social structures never designed for neurodivergent or queer communities, reclaiming narratives and imagining a different kind of future where we are all capable, subjective beings who don't need to be cured or normalized to have a world that belongs to us.