During the COVID-19 pandemic, children with disabilities were confronted with ableist discourses that justified unfair policy measures. This study is concerned with the discourses recorded in a range of education documents, published during the pandemic within the Republic of Cyprus. It employs an interdisciplinary framework, informed by Critical…

The possibility to participate in education and lifelong learning has been introduced in EU disability policy in recent decades as one of the key means to improve the socioeconomic position of disabled persons. Simultaneously, lifelong learning has been developed as the defining concept of EU education policy to increase social cohesion and…

Corpus planning has attracted attention ever since Deborah Cameron's seminal "Verbal Hygiene" (1995). However, evaluations of corpus planning aimed at addressing linguistic discrimination have been surprisingly scarce. Because corpus planning costs energy, time and money, evaluations are important for future actions. This study discusses…

Conducting qualitative, critical ethnographical research on disability in Palestine requires deep self-reflexivity, exploring positionality while claiming authorship. As a Palestinian conducting backyard research, I explored ways to conceptualize disability in light of language and macro factors related to Israeli occupation practices. While…

This paper draws upon education policy sociology, and sport coaching literature, in critically examining sport coaches as policy actors. Stephen Ball and colleagues' conceptualisation of different policy actor positions and roles provided the framework for research that investigated how eight professional swimming coaches in Victoria, Australia,…

Background: Children with disabilities stand to gain from an array of services and interventions to support their development. However, relationships between parents of children with disabilities and professionals can be fraught, with the potential that professionals undermine the role of parents and overlook their agency. Aim: The aim of this…

Since 1995 the UK higher education sector has been required to implement national disability related legislation. This paper reports on a study which explored the role that policies play in influencing how staff support disabled students. In particular the extent to which staff in HE behave in similar ways to those described as street level…

The paper details the findings of a study which focused on the analysis of the cultural representation of disability in school textbooks in Iran and England. The paper argues that whilst inclusive education could facilitate the incorporating of disabled pupils into mainstream schools, there needs to be deeper examination as to how this transition…

Responding to the special issue call "Capital and Capability," this paper undertakes a critical policy analysis of a recently published Irish labour market activation strategy for people with disabilities through a discourse analytical framework. Drawing on a disability studies lens informed by Foucault's theory of discourse, the study…

This article uses critical discourse analysis in order to discuss the equity and social justice implications of an envisaged education reform agenda in Cyprus, as articulated by two consultation reports commissioned by the World Bank. The reports highlight, "inter alia," the imperative to improve teaching and enhance accountability…

There are different ways of theorising dyslexia and different ways of constructing meanings around dyslexia in different learning contexts. This paper considers the role of neoliberalist ideology in shaping conversations about dyslexia and "fairness" during two focus group conversations analysed as part of a study into the discursive…

Could targeted inclusion initiatives press Canada's professional theatre community to tap the vast reserve of disabled people disenfranchised by its current practices? In 2015/2016, several long-standing professional institutions dedicated to fostering Canadian theatre joined with Canadian disability theatre artists in order to mark and understand…

This article reveals the Foucauldian docile body manufactured within the Department for Education's special educational needs and disability code of practice 2014 through employment of a theoretical lens of embodiment and an analytical focus on only three words. In problematizing the concepts of support, employment and independence, we seek to…

This study examines how the Home for Children with Disabilities and disability identities were construed by Thai undergraduates in their website project through an analysis of metaphors. Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) was the framework for analyzing the use of metaphors and the participants' enactment of identity and social representation. The…

Illustrations in English textbooks are not merely decorations (Romney, 2012); they can represent ideology and identity (Elmiana, 2019; Ihm, 1998). This paper explores the sociocultural and political dimensions in English textbooks' illustrations for public schools in Indonesia. The leading question for this inquiry is "What imagined…