Enacting Critical Special Education through Harm Reduction in Teacher Education

Teacher education is often positioned as the solution to educational inequities, yet preparing teachers to support students with disabilities remains deeply constrained by ableist structures within special education. Disability Studies in Education (DSE) offers a transformative framework that rejects deficit models and centers the voices, rights, and strengths of disabled people. However, DSE’s distance from licensure systems and practitioner preparation has limited its reach into teacher education. This chapter introduces Critical Special Education (CSE) as a harm reduction approach that bridges DSE ideals with the realities of special education practice. We situate CSE in relation to DSE’s tenets, explore how ableism produces ongoing harm, and illustrate enactments of CSE in both preservice and in-service teacher education. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate how educators can critically navigate compliance-driven systems while working to mitigate harm, disrupt deficit discourses, and move toward more inclusive, humanizing, and justice-oriented teaching for students with disabilities.