Edited by the leading scholars in the field, Vital Questions Facing Disability Studies in Education provides an overview and introduction to the growing field of disability studies in education, including the application of the interdisciplinary field of disability studies to inclusive education, teacher education, educational research, and educational policy development. While traditional special education research has focused on developing interventions aimed at increasing students' functional capacities, disability studies scholars have asked provocative and probing questions about how communities and schools can value, include, and nurture disabled persons. This second edition continues the emphasis of the first edition on the central questions that drive this critical field of inquiry and social action, while broadening its scope to more fully address international educational issues. The first edition of this text has been widely adopted in undergraduate and graduate courses in disability studies and inclusive education.

As a field of inquiry, disability studies in education stands at the broad intersection of disability studies and educational studies. This book introduces graduate students, educational researchers, and teacher educators to the range of scholarly inquiry emerging from this exciting new field. Susan L. Gabel pulls together a sampling of the vast array of available scholarship that includes readings that intersect curriculum theory, critical policy analysis, personal narrative, and much more. Although disability studies in education has only recently been recognized as a field of inquiry with an identifiable body of literature, the chapters in this book present the work of some of the major scholars of disability studies in education.

Disability and the Politics of Education: An International Reader is a rich resource that deals comprehensively with the many aspects of the complex topic of disability studies in education. For nearly two decades, global attention has been given to education as a human right through global initiatives such as Education for All (EFA) and the Salamanca Statement. Yet according to UNESCO, reaching the goals of EFA remains one of the most daunting challenges facing the global community. Today, millions of the world's disabled children cannot obtain a basic childhood education, particularly in countries with limited resources. Even in the wealthiest countries, many disabled children and youth are educationally segregated from the nondisabled, particularly if they are labeled with significant cognitive impairment. International agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank have generated funds for educational development but, unfortunately, these funds are administered with the assumption that «west is best, thereby urging developing countries to mimic educational policies in the United States and the United Kingdom in order to prove their aid-worthiness. This «McDonaldization of education reproduces the labeling, resource allocation, and social dynamics long criticized in disability studies. The authors in this volume explore these subjects and other complexities of disability and the politics of education. In doing so, they demonstrate the importance and usefulness of international perspectives and comparative approaches.