Reconceptualizing Disability in Education - (Critical Issues in Disabilities and Education) by Luigi Iannacci (Paperback)

About the Book

This book provides an essential critical exploration of how disability is presently understood and responded to within the field of education. It forwards a human rights-focused model of disability that mandates the amelioration of people with disabilities within education.

Book Synopsis

This book provides an essential critical exploration of how disability is presently understood and responded to within the field of education. It forwards a human rights-focused model of disability that mandates the amelioration of people with disabilities within education.

Review Quotes

Dr. Luigi Iannacci's book is a welcome resource for helping pre-service teachers better understand the nuances and complexities of inclusion and their important role in helping to actualize it for students in their care. Dr. Iannacci advocates for a reconceptualist approach towards inclusion which stresses the critical thinking required to deconstruct the ways that dominant discourses in education shape interactions and practices and impose inequitable and coercive relations of power on students who are differently abled. Dr. Iannacci provides vivid and rich case studies which serve to connect theory to practice for those beginning in the teaching profession. This is a welcome book on the Canadian pre-service teacher education landscape and I look forward to using it in courses about inclusion with my teacher candidates. After reading this text they will be far better equipped to be advocates for inclusion in Canadian schools.

This extremely important book provides a startling counterpoint to the dominant discourses and deeply flawed notions regarding disability and inclusion. Filled with compelling and poignant narratives, Luigi Iannacci clearly argues for an asset-oriented model of inclusion that recognizes and capitalizes on the understanding of diverse ways of being and knowing. Iannacci deftly outlines and provides personal and theoretical-based pedagogical models, strategies, and practices that reconceptualizes instruction provided to students with disabilities. It is an essential resource for all levels of school leadership and for teachers, teacher candidates and parents who can facilitate asset-oriented, multiliteracies-informed, inclusive learning environments, and at the same time, work to reject the current pathologicalizing systems that are in place in education. I'm excited to make room on my bookshelf for this dynamic text.

About the Author

Luigi Iannacci is professor in the School of Education and Professional Learning at Trent University