Literacy Education and Disability Studies: Reenvisioning Struggling Students

In this commentary, the authors present disability studies in education ( DSE ) as an alternative way to reframe, understand, and teach students who are positioned as struggling in literacy classrooms. As the authors detail, a DSE perspective changes the relationship between teachers and students to a more reciprocal one, and in doing so, it relocates the source of and responsibility for literacy struggles. The authors begin with a discussion of DSE , followed by a reconsideration of how to support students in developing their academic literacies. The commentary concludes with a discussion of why, in an era marked by increasing educational standardization and homogenization, a move to teaching that is informed by a DSE perspective is increasingly a matter of great urgency.