Table 2

Survey Question 5: In your opinion, what qualifies as discussing disability positively?

To better understand what constituted positive discussions, respondents were offered three closed-ended options (raise awareness; use positive language; avoid stereotype) and one open-ended option where they could offer their own response. Participants were also allowed to choose more than one response. Most participants selected raise awareness (85%), followed by use positive language, (70%), and avoid stereotype (62%). Sixteen participants (18.2%) also offered open-ended responses. Overarching themes from these responses included: Discussing disability culture, pride, history, intersectionality, and identity; Addressing ableism; Focusing on language use (i.e., identity first language, not using outdated terminology); and Situating the disabled person as expert (learning from disabled people and reading texts by disabled authors).

RQ2: What insights and suggestions do disabled individuals have for teachers who would like to engage in disability discussion in K-12th grade classrooms?

Develop a Deeper Understanding of Disability Rights and Awareness (Tenet 3)

When responding to the two open-ended scenarios, participants noted the importance of teachers educating themselves about disability history, culture, and language. Participants felt that professional development offered one way for teachers to learn “how to facilitate these discussions [and] the evolving nature of language and how it’s used to reinforce stereotypes but sometimes disrupt them.” Participants also said that teachers should research disabled people’s experiences, especially those of disabled activists. In one representative quotation, a participant noted: “If [the teacher is] worried about saying something offensive, doing research about ways to talk about the subject would be the best start.” Participants noted that self-education has the potential to make teachers more comfortable engaging in discussion and to provide them with an opportunity to dispel any implicit, negative perceptions of disability. Participants also provided a list of texts to guide teacher reflection and awareness (Appendix B).

Reflect On Their Own Or Others’ Attitudes And Actions Related To Disability (Tenet 1) and Question Stereotypes Related To Disability (Tenet 4)

Participants stressed that teachers should actively engage with disability through internal work, such engaging in self-reflection, and external engagement, like refraining from silence, implementing inclusive classroom practices, and seeking out members of the disability community. Several participants offered that the teacher should start with themselves. They suggested that if teachers are fearful of discussion, “I would ask them what they’re afraid of and who they’re afraid of offending. Usually, the individual is more uncomfortable themselves than any disabled kids who know how it goes from their own experiences.” Participants continually expressed that “messing up,” reflecting, and recalibrating is better than a teacher entirely avoiding disability discussion. As one participant noted, “They will mess up sometimes, [but] they’ll mess up more by completely avoiding the topic.”

To this end, participants stressed that teachers should not stay silent. Participants shared that, “Talking about disability is less offensive than avoiding it. By avoiding the topic, they are treating it like it’s bad or it’s a problem,” and:

I would encourage [teachers] to recognize that that fear and lack of open dialogue is what perpetuates the fear and separation and stigma. I would share resources for them to get familiar and comfortable and encourage them to be ok not being comfortable so they don't perpetuate similar discomfort in their students.

Another participant shared that students are naturally curious about disability, and it is better to address misconceptions rather than stay silent and let children internalize that disability is “bad” or “wrong”:

It is inevitable for us in society to run into those with disability, and some of us notice family members or friends with disabilities at a young age. Just keeping people in the dark about it sends the wrong message, teaches people to be afraid of disability, can be taken as a sign that the teacher lacks sufficient willpower or skill, and only makes people with disabilities feel more isolated, othered, and ignored.

Similarly, a participant shared:

We see so many euphemisms that try to “soften” what is assumed to be NEGATIVE which for many people with disabilities is a positive experience/identity. We have to model as teachers how to have difficult dialogues, the importance of being called in when mistakes are made which are human and the variability in how disabled people prefer or understand the experiences of disability. #saytheword

All participants felt strongly that talking about disability—even if it meant “messing up”—was more beneficial than either invoking euphemistic language, such as “differently-abled” instead of saying “disabled,” or avoiding disability-based discussion altogether.

While participants suggested that teachers work to enhance their understanding of disability, they also noted the importance of seeking input from disabled people, either as a means of forefronting disabled perspectives or helping facilitate discussion with students. In one representative quotation, a participant said, “I would encourage them to include disabled people in the discussion and to consult with disabled people to structure the conversations or key messages.” Participants also stated the importance of actively connecting with members of the disability community: “I would recommend that they bring in a guest speaker with a disability to discuss the topic. Perhaps this could even help the teacher for the future in feeling like they can discuss it on their own.” Several participants noted, however, that while some disabled people might readily participate in discussion, it is not the responsibility of all disabled people to educate non-disabled people about disability identity. As one participant shared, “[Teachers should] never single someone they know to have a disability out,” especially a student in their classroom.

Recognize that Human Variation is Normal (Tenet 2)

Additionally, participants highlighted the importance of cultivating inclusive classroom spaces. Several noted that making students aware of the social model of disability could not only make them aware of barriers that disabled people encounter, but it could also highlight disability as a minoritized social identity. As one participant stated: “It is important for students to come away with the knowledge that disability is only a bad thing because society’s systems are designed in a way that is not inclusive, not because disabilities themselves are limiting.” Another suggested:

[Teachers could] frame [disability] discussion in terms of strengths and resilience of disabled people, as well as social and economic barriers to disabled peoples’ participation in society—it is possible to really distill the social model of disability for all ages!

Participants also said that classroom culture could help or hinder students’ understanding of their own disability identity. Two participants said that they wished that their teachers had tried to use discussion to create a classroom where they felt seen and supported rather than othered. As one participant said:

The one thing I would have wanted my teachers to discuss was that their classroom was a safe space and that if I felt overwhelmed at any time I could step out or talk to them about it. Instead, I often felt trapped.

Another participant shared that while they did not see their disability as a “big secret,” teachers viewed it that way, and they perceived they were made to feel stupid because of their diagnosis:

As a person with a learning disability I was treated like it was a big secret, but the teachers always made a big deal of when I left the classroom for tutoring and things like that. I don't know the world any differently. This is how my brain has always worked…I had to go through a lot to get to where I am today because a lot of people either implied or told me that I was not smart enough.

Participants also noted specific strategies that teachers should and should not use when talking about disability:

Help them to understand that individuals with disabilities have come so far in today’s society because they fought for their basic human rights. Show them examples of disabled people living life. Showing disabled folks in high-power jobs is great and should be celebrated, but so are the everyday jobs. Discussing disabled people as whole people is important: it’s not just about education and employment, but also about access to sports and recreation, healthcare, hobbies, and socialization. Outlining the struggles in these areas can help raise awareness of how things still can be improved, but also celebrating and demonstrating the ways that inclusion is actively being practiced already.

Participants felt that incorporating disability identity into classroom practices, as well as actively engaging with the disability community, provided opportunities for teachers to effectively enact disability-related discussion with their students.

Discussion

This study examined whether disabled individuals (n = 88) engaged in disability-related discussion during their K-12 experiences in the United States, as well as whether they perceived these discussions to be positive. Additionally, participants were presented with two scenarios and were asked what recommendations they have for teachers who would like to discuss disabilities in their K-12 classrooms.

Results from this research indicate that when participants did encounter conversations about disability in the classroom, they recalled that they were typically not presented through an anti-ableist lens. Over 30% of the participants in this survey recalled never engaging in a discussion about disability during the entirety of their K-12 schooling. Forty percent of the entire sample were recent college graduates, which indicates that, even recently, conversations about disability stereotypes, stigma, culture, and/or identity may not be taking place in US classrooms. Again, while the small sample size of the present study limits generalizability, these data point to the need for further emphasis on anti-ableist discussion in K-12 schools.

Recommendations Align with and Expand Upon Anti-Ableist Strategies

Data from this research confirm alignment between the four tenets of anti-ableist discussion (Baglieri & Shapiro, 2017) and the perspectives of a sample of disabled people in the United States. First, they highlight the importance of teacher education as related to anti-ableism, and that teachers could benefit from graduate level coursework and/or professional development. Enhancing teachers’ knowledge base can increase teachers’ feelings of self-efficacy when discussing disability through an anti-ableist lens and expose teachers to content (e.g., the Disability Rights Movement) that they could then incorporate into their classes (Tenet 3; Baglieri & Shapiro, 2017). Participants also urged teachers to discuss disability as a cultural identity and problematize negative portrayals to combat stigma (Tenet 1 and Tenet 4). As participants noted, teachers’ well-meaning attempts to gloss over or ignore disability often increased students’ feelings of internalized ableism, which echoes findings from Mueller’s (2019) exploration of disabled students’ understandings of their disability labels. Participants emphasized the recognition and removal of barriers, which aligns with the social model of disability (Connor et al., 2015).

Participants also stressed the importance of teachers normalizing disability (Tenet 2). Marian Wright Edelman, Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund, has been credited with coining the phrase, “You cannot be what you cannot see.” In other words, it can be hard for children to visualize future accomplishments or opportunities if they are not exposed to the successes of someone who looks like them. Participants noted that disabled children need—and rarely encounter—representation of disabled adults engaged in “everyday” activities to regularize disability. This finding is particularly salient, as it expands the idea that representation means only sharing the stories of famous disabled people. Portraying typical daily activity (i.e., going to work, having a family, engaging in a hobby) not only allows disabled children to see what is possible—it also mediates common tropes of disability as either “inspirational” or “pitiable” (Garland-Thomson, 2002).

Additionally, participants appear to suggest the disruption of what scholars term “able-bodied fragility” (Singer, 2020; Stephenson, 2024). The concept of fragility originated with Robin DiAngelo (2018), who sought a way to describe the defensiveness many white people exhibited when confronted with issues of racism, discrimination, and their own privilege. Drawing on DiAngelo’s work, Stephenson (2024) defined fragility as:

A state of vulnerability or sensitivity in which individuals (who are typically members of dominant societal groups) react defensively or negatively when their privileged status or beliefs are challenged. Fragility arises from a combination of societal privilege and the discomfort or defensiveness individuals experience when their privilege is questioned or challenged. It can manifest in various ways, such as resistance to acknowledging privilege, discomfort with critical discussions, or outward displays of emotion. Ultimately, fragility serves to protect and maintain existing power dynamics and societal structures. (p. 6)

Conceptually, non-disabled fragility helps explain the feelings that teachers may experience when asked to engage in anti-ableist discussion: namely, discomfort, fear of “messing up,” and fear of offending a disabled person. As several participants noted, teachers need to work though their fragility and talk about disability with their students. If teachers understand how their silence upholds non-disabled privilege, they may be more inclined to recognize that not discussing disability only benefits non-disabled people and maintains ableist structures (Stephenson, 2024).

Teachers Could Benefit from Self-Exploration of Anti-Ableism

As open-ended participant responses indicated, for teachers to effectively lead anti-ableist discussion with their students, they must first explore their beliefs about what it means to be disabled. Research has shown that one’s implicit biases may inadvertently affect the way they engage with those around them (Beneke et al., 2018; Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010; Lin et al., 2008; Sapon-Shevin, 2017). For teachers, this work is all the more critical, as they have the power to shape children’s educational trajectories (Aloi & Bialka, 2022; Blackwell et al., 2017; Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010).

Teacher self-exploration can be divided into three categories: oneself and one’s own experiences, oneself in relation to others, and oneself in relation to larger systems, especially education. Each of these categories aligns with levels of ableism (internal, interpersonal, and institutional). We offer the following sets of questions, based on Milner’s (2007) framework related to race and culture, as well as Derman-Sparks and Edwards’ (2010) five essential questions related to anti-ableism, to guide teachers’ anti-ableist journeys. These questions are intended to unearth internal, interpersonal, and institutional perceptions of disability. Additionally, as disability is an intersectional identity, it is helpful for teachers to sift through their beliefs about disability in conjunction with their beliefs about other minoritized identities.

As noted in Table 3, there are multiple ways for teachers to support their self-reflection. It important for teachers to recognize that they do have agency within their schools and classrooms as related to anti-ableism. For example, when considering larger educational systems, how might a teacher’s perception of what “counts” as reading affect their view of disabled students? As Blackwell (2017) explained, reading via “books made of relatively thin paper, with black text and an off-white background, and font sizes ranging from 10-16 point… has a clear preference in schools and society, and is promoted from the time children enter kindergarten” (p. 40). And yet, this represents only one way of reading. Audio books, as well as e-readers with contrast and text size and font options, are equally valuable ways to read. While “this latter method of reading in fact appears to be embraced by adults who enjoy their electronic ‘toys’…our current experiences in classrooms suggest to us that these forms of reading are neither valued nor promoted in schools” (p. 40). Notably, we are not arguing for the total replacement of core literacy skills or the lessening of teachers’ responsibility in this area; rather, we hope to expand teachers’ understanding of viable ways for students to encounter text.

Teachers can also consider how the messages they received as children shaped their worldview and use these questions to problematize any racist or ableist viewpoints that they have consciously or subconsciously internalized. Then, when they are presented with an issue that involves a disabled student, they have a stronger understanding of their internal belief system and can better check potentially ableist assumptions. Perhaps most importantly, teachers’ self-reflection must be accompanied by their commitment to action; without this step, the potential for change is limited.

Applicability Beyond the United States

While the present study occurs in the United States, recent research (Baker, 2024) underscored the applicability of these findings in international and Canadian contexts. In his qualitative analysis of students’ perceived effects of participating in a Grade 9–12 disability studies course, Baker (2024) found that participants (a teacher [n=1] and their students [n=4]) expressed a greater level of understanding of disability and inclusion after completing the course. Student participants identified three positive outcomes as a result of their participation in the course: cross-curricular application; consciousness raising; and inclusion advancement (p. 138-139). Notably, all participants cited “a lack of disability-related content in Manitoba’s Grade 9–12 curriculum, with one participant specifically citing their Grade 12 biology teacher as pandering to ableist discourse, specifically when exploring genetics and Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)” (p. 159-60). These data indicate that the need for anti-ableist discussion reaches beyond the confines of the United States and should be further investigated on a global scale.

Limitations and Future Directions

Although the number of participants aligns with similar exploratory studies regarding race (see: Vittrup, 2016), two of the most salient limitations are sample size and lack of data triangulation (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Though we collected information on race and gender, the small sample size did not allow for meaningful analyses by demographic group. Future researchers could explore these important questions with a larger, more diverse set of participants.

Additional limitations include the age of respondents, as most of the sample (67.5%) were aged 18-29, and lack of information on participants’ geographic location within the United States. While this demographic concentration may limit the generalizability of the findings, it also provides a valuable perspective on more recent practices in schools. Since a portion of the survey is retrospective (i.e., asking participants to recall prior disability discussion), results are subject to recall effect (Street & Ward, 2010). The risk of recall effect increases as time passes. For this reason, these data offer summary reflections on participants’ experiences and provide insight into the number of respondents who hold a positive impression of discussions about disability in their K-12 experiences. While data strongly indicate that most disability discussion that participants encountered as not anti-ableist in nature, additional research is needed to further support this claim. Finally, the research team created the survey items to assess the presence (or absence) of anti-ableist discussion. However, since survey items did not explicitly use the terms “anti-ableist” or “anti-ableism,” it is possible that their understanding of these terms could differ from those of the research team.

There remains a lack of substantive, positive disability-related discussion in K-12 classrooms in the United States. As a result, participants encouraged teachers to talk about disability identity and to do the work involved in understanding how to lead these discussions if teachers were intimidated or unsure. Participants’ recommendations are especially pertinent considering the more recent legislation that requires some US schools to teach about disability, disability history, and discuss the contributions of disabled people (Mueller & Beneke, 2023). The integration of this legislation also offers opportunities for subsequent study of disability discussion in K-12 schools in the United States, as well as internationally. Future research could expand on this current report by soliciting the voices of those students who encounter disability discussion as a part of this legislation. The inclusion of qualitative measures, such as participant focus groups or interviews, could also contextualize the current findings.

Researchers might also broaden the scope of the current investigation to include international perspectives on anti-ableism in education. As related to the current research project, Article 8 (Awareness Raising) of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006; CRPD) states that:

States Parties undertake to adopt immediate, effective and appropriate measures:
a. To raise awareness throughout society, including at the family level, regarding persons with disabilities, and to foster respect for the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities;
b. To combat stereotypes, prejudices and harmful practices relating to persons with disabilities, including those based on sex and age, in all areas of life;
c. To promote awareness of the capabilities and contributions of persons with disabilities (CRPD, 2006, p. 8)

Hakala et al.’s (2018) review of DSE-related scholarship in Nordic countries offers an excellent starting point for examining anti-ableism in CRPD-aligned educational contexts. They consider how researchers in Iceland and Finland have engaged with DSE, as well as how the CRPD shaped DSE in both countries. Future researchers could draw on Hakala et al.’s work to enhance work on anti-ableism, educational equality, and social justice in educational settings.

Interestingly, few participants in the present study framed disability—or their responses to the given prompts—through the lens of intersectionality. This may be because the research questions were specific to disability identity, not disability as related to other identities. Since disability operates in tandem with other identities, future researchers should consider how to frame research questions through an intersectional lens.

Given the lack of research on the experiences of disabled students in the US as related to disability discussion, this study provides a necessary landscape for understanding the state of disability discussion in US schools. Equally importantly, this research offers implementable strategies and solutions from disabled folks to address this issue and, ultimately, provide resources to teachers that will allow them to engage in meaningful disability-related discussion.

Acknowledgements: The authors thank these participants for sharing their perspectives.

Declaration of Interest Statement:The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding: The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication of this article.

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Appendix A

Survey (Q1-9)

1. I can recall classroom discussions about disability while in... (please select all that apply)

▢ Elementary School (Grades PreK-5) (1)

▢ Middle School (Grades 6-8) (2)

▢ High School (Grades 9-12) (3)

▢ Never (4)

▢ I cannot recall (5)

2. During ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (grades PreK - 5), how frequently did your teachers discuss disability positively? (5 possible options)

▼ Never (1) ... I cannot recall (5)

3. During MIDDLE SCHOOL (grades 6 - 8), how frequently did your teachers discuss disability positively? (5 possible options)

▼ Never (1) ... I cannot recall (5)

4. During HIGH SCHOOL (grades 9 - 12), how frequently did your teachers discuss disability positively? (5 possible options)

▼ Never (1) ... I cannot recall (5)

5. In your opinion, what qualifies as discussing disability positively? Please select all that apply, and feel free to enter your own response(s)

▢ Teacher(s) avoid disability-related stereotypes (1)

▢ Teacher(s) use language that frames disability positively (2)

▢ Teacher(s) raise awareness about barriers that can limit accessibility/inclusion (3)

▢ Other (4) ________________________________________________

6. Please use this space if you would like to expand upon any of your answers.

7. A teacher tells you they* are hesitant to discuss disability with their classroom because they fear they will say something offensive. How would you respond? (*gender inclusive pronoun)

8. A teacher tells you that they would like to talk about disability in their classroom. What advice or suggestions would you offer?

9. If you have any resources (books, articles, websites, TED Talks, etc.) that you would recommend for teachers interested in engaging in disability-related discussion, please add your recommendations below. If not, you can move on to the next question.