In our eighteenth episode, Stephen and Shannon are joined by Dr. Gillian Parekh.

Dr. Parekh is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Disability Studies in Education (Tier 2) within the Faculty of Education at York. Gillian is cross-appointed with York's graduate program in Critical Disability studies. As a previous teacher in special education and research coordinator with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Gillian has conducted extensive system and school-based research in Toronto in the areas of structural equity, special education, and academic streaming. In particular, her work explores how schools construct and respond to disability as well as how students are organized across programs and systems.Source: https://edu.yorku.ca/edu-profiles/index.php?mid=732857

In this episode we speak to Dr. Parekh about her new book, Ableism in Education: Rethinking School Practices and Policies. Through the conversation, Dr. Parekh discusses the “unbreakable relationship” between ability and schooling. Ability is used to organize students, and this results in hierarchies and ranking of students; this is reinforced by assessment and grading. Dr. Parekh speaks to the way notions of ability re/produce deficit narratives. We speak about the impact of academic streaming, special education, and gifted programs. Through this conversation, we also talk about the ways that race, gender and parental education level intersects with constructions of students’ ability. At the end of the conversation, we speak about the rationale for inviting and involving students in decisions surrounding policies and practices. We also speak about a resource that Dr. Parekh helped co-create, Equity and Human Rights in Education: Critical Reflective Practice Guide

Relevant Publications:
Archer, L., Francis, B., Miller, S., Taylor, B., Tereshchenko, A., Mazenod, A., Pepper, D., & Travers, M.-C. (2018). The symbolic violence of setting: A Bourdieusian analysis of mixed methods data on secondary students’ views about setting. British Educational Research Journal, 44(1), 119–140

Annamma, S., & Morrison, D. (2018). Identifying dysfunctional education ecologies: A DisCrit analysis of bias in the classroom. Equity & Excellence in Education, 51(2), 114–131. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2018.1496047

Brantlinger, E. A. (2006). Who Benefits From Special Education?: Remediating (Fixing) Other People’s Children. Routledge.

Connor, D. J. (2017). Who is responsible for the racialized practices evident within (special) education and what can be done to change them? Theory into Practice, 56(3), 226–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2017.1336034

Duncan-Andrade, J. M. R., & Morrell, E. (2008). The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools. Peter Lang.

Gallagher-Mackay, K., Brown, R.S., Parekh, G., James C.E. & Corso, C. (2023). “I have all my credits – now what?”: Disparities in postsecondary transitions, invisible gatekeeping and inequitable access to rigorous upper year curriculum in Toronto, Ontario. Toronto: Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and the Diaspora at York University. https://www.yorku.ca/edu/jean-augustine-chair/publications/pse-access-report/

Gaztambide-Fernández, R., Saifer, A., & Desai, C. (2013). “Talent” and the misrecognition of social advantage in specialized arts education. Roeper Review, 35(2), 124–135. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2013.766964

Gaztambide-Fernández, R., & Parekh, G. (2017). Market "Choices" or Structured Pathways? How Specialized Arts Education Contributes to the Reproduction of Inequality. Education policy analysis archives, 25(41), n41.

James, C. E. & Parekh, G. (2021). Fixed Trajectories: Race, schooling and graduation from a Southern Ontario university. Canadian Journal of Higher Education.

James, C. E., & Turner, T. (2017). Towards race equity in education: The schooling of Black students in the Greater Toronto Area. York University. https://edu.yorku.ca/files/2017/04/Towards-Race-Equity-in-EducationApril2017.pdf

Ineese-Nash, N. (2020). Disability as a colonial construct: The missing discourse of culture in conceptualizations of disabled Indigenous children. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 9(3), 28–51. https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v9i3.645

Parekh, G. (2022). Ableism in Education: Rethinking School Practices and Policies (Equity and Social Justice in Education). W. W. Norton & Company.

Parekh, G. (2017). The tyranny of “ability”. Curriculum Inquiry, 47(4), 337-343.

Parekh, G. & Brown, R. S. (2020). The tension between institutional and self-identification of disability. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 9(5), 347-379.

Parekh, G., & Brown, R. S. (2019). Changing lanes: The relationship between special education placement and students’ academic futures. Educational Policy, 33(1), 111-135.

Parekh, G., Brown, R. S., & Robson, K. (2018). The social construction of giftedness: The intersectional relationship between whiteness, economic privilege, and the identification of gifted. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 7(2), 1-33.

Parekh, G. Brown, R.S., & Zheng, S. (2018). Learning skills, system equity and implicit bias within Ontario, Canada. Educational Policy, 35(3), 395-321.

Reid, D. K., & Knight, M. G. (2006) Disability justifies exclusion of minority students: A critical history grounded in disability studies, educational researcher, 35(6), 18–23.

Sloan, K. (2013, May 9). The fallacy of intelligence and genetic determinism. The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. https://www.cbc-network.org/2013/05/the-fallacy-of-intelligence-and-genetic-determinism/

Relevant Resources Guide:
Equity and Human Rights in Special Educationhttps://www.criticalreflectivepractice.com/