Reforming Special Education Means Reforming Research Methods

Historically, special education research has been dominated by the medical model of disability, which frames students as deficient and positions researchers as the sole experts. This approach has marginalized the voices of people with disabilities and perpetuated colonial, positivist assumptions about who holds knowledge. Critical special education, by contrast, draws from the social model of disability, decolonizing methodologies, and participatory research traditions to center students and communities as co-constructors of knowledge. This chapter critiques the dominance of deficit-based and exclusionary research practices, illustrating how they fail to benefit the very communities they claim to study. It argues for participatory action research (PAR) and related approaches as pathways toward more equitable, inclusive, and transformative inquiry. By highlighting exemplary studies that authentically involve people with disabilities in all stages of research, the chapter demonstrates how critical special education can reimagine research as a collaborative, justice-oriented enterprise guided by the principle “nothing about us without us.”