Diversity, Exceptionality, and Knowledge Construction

Knowledge Construction

Knowledge construction is one of five conceptual dimensions of multicultural education formulated by James A. Banks. It describes how knowledge is created and how assumptions, perspectives, and biases can influence the beliefs and the knowledge that become institutionalized within schools and society. In special education, practitioners and theorists play a key—though often unexamined or unconscious—role in designing and actualizing the knowledge construction process through the pedagogies and content educators use for instruction, the structures used to organize school, and the questions deemed worthy of educational inquiry. A multicultural approach to knowledge construction uses multiple perspectives to seek a broad understanding of a topic and actively pursues and acknowledges the assumptions and biases inherent within each perspective. This challenges traditional Western empirical thought through the presumption that different perspectives have merit and by revealing the omissions and distortions of mainstream knowledge. In schools, a multicultural approach to knowledge construction challenges the paradigm of the teacher and the school as the exclusive bearer of content and pedagogical knowledge. An examination of special education illustrates how assumptions of knowledge influence conceptualizations of disability and diversity and manifest in educational practices that affect school structures and students' educational opportunities.

Exceptionality in Schools

School-based disability categories—as defined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1990, 2004)—have been typically understood to be composed of two broad groupings: high and low incidence. Low-incidence disabilities such as deafness and blindness, traumatic brain injury, and physical disabilities, occur less frequently and are medically diagnosed (i.e., by a physician). The majority of students in special education have high-incidence disabilities, which include mental retardation, emotional and behavioral disabilities, and learning disabilities. These disability categories are diagnosed by school personnel and are considered by some to be socially constructed disabilities. The conflation of conceptual models used to understand, diagnose, and manage both low- and high-incidence disabilities has become a point of contention within the special education literature.

Significant scholarly attention has focused on the disproportionate representation of ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse students in high-incidence disability categories. Recent research indicates that English language learners (or linguistically diverse students) should also be included in studies of disproportionality. Research references the approximately proportional representation of diverse students identified with low-incidence disabilities as evidence that the high-incidence categories may have biased diagnostic measures and eligibility procedures. The issues of disproportionality highlight the intersections of disability and diversity and create the foundation for understanding how conceptualizations of exceptionality can influence the short-term and long-term educational experience of students with special needs.

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