(Un)Learning Disability

Book excerpt: How do high school students confront and resolve conflicting messages about their intelligence and academic potential, particularly when labelled with social and learning disabilities? How does disability become "disablement" when negative attitudes and disparaging perceptions of ability position students as outsiders? Following the lives of adolescents at home and at school, the author makes visible the disabling language, contextual arrangements, and unconscious social practices that restrict learning regardless of special education services. She also showcases how young people resist disablement to transfrom their worlds and pursue pathways most important to them. Educators and scholars can use this important resource to recognize and change disabling practices that are often taken for granted as a natural part of schooling.