Response to Cochran-Smith and Dudley-Marling, “Diversity in Teacher Education and Special Education: The Issues That Divide”

As a special educator whose research is in teacher education, I did not recognize the field of special education described in Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Curt Dudley-Marling's article titled "Diversity in Teacher Education and Special Education: The Issues that Divide," published in the latest issue of Journal of Teacher Education. They wrote that the field of special education "pathologizes individual students, their families, their language and cultures, and the communities from which they come." They used divisive language such as "deficit thinking," "medical model," and "hostility" to describe the views and reactions of the field. This tradition was contrasted with the sociocultural theory of learning, which they argued dominates general education discourse. In their words, this theory "begins with presumption of competence and of the widespread distribution of human capacity ... [and builds] on the language, culture, and background knowledge and experience all students bring with them to school to support their learning." They used phrases such as "social justice," "learning affordances," and "promoting cultural well-being." To which of these two traditions would you prefer to belong? In their discussion, Cochran-Smith and Dudley-Marling devote twice as much space to problems as to solutions. Polarizing our fields does not serve well and places the greater education community farther from the goals we are all trying to achieve. I hope readers will agree that instead of assigning blame or perpetuating stereotypes, we all need to accept responsibility for any schism and encourage more work devoted to bridging this divide. If we in higher education are genuinely dedicated to transforming education through consensus-building and collaboration, we need to serve as models for our K-12 colleagues and challenge ourselves to be first to walk down that path. Below, I present an alternative perspective to the issues presented by the authors, and broaden the discussion regarding how we can continue to move forward as one diverse, yet united body of teacher educators. Cochran-Smith and Dudley-Marling outline three major issues that they believe divide our diversity communities, and conclude by outlining three areas "where at least some" general and special educators may be able to agree. First, they cite different disciplinary influences in the two fields. They assert that special educators, influenced by fields such as behavioral psychology and medicine, study the diagnosis and remediation of deficits. As such, they claim that many special educators "are adamant that experimental and quasi-experimental methods are the only way to achieve objective knowledge." General educators, influenced by social justice models, study the context of learning, moving away from traditional experimental and quasi-experimental methods. Certainly, our fields did have different origins, but I would argue that at this point, both of our fields are equally diverse in terms of their approaches to research and ways of thinking. For example, only 8.5% of dissertations in special education published between 1997 and 2012 used an experimental or quasi-experimental design (Walker & Haley-Mize, 2012). In fact, the largest categories of methodologies were "descriptive" (26.5%), "mixed methods" (19.5%), and "qualitative" (18.9%). This does not look like a field with a single-minded focus on one methodology. Second, Cochran-Smith and Dudley-Marling argue that a concentration on the "dis" in "disability" guides the special education community to "ameliorate students' deficiencies" through research and practice, whereas teacher educators working from a social constructivist model "begin with the presumption of competence" and build on students' diverse backgrounds to support learning. To test whether the authors are correct that "the medical model with its disease orientation reinforces deficit thinking that permeates special education discourse," I consulted the latest two issues of our flagship journals, Exceptional Children and The Journal of Special Education. …