EXPANDING EPISTEMOLOGICAL POSSIBILITIES IN RESEARCH ABOUT DIVERSIFICATION OF THE TEACHER WORKFORCE

Two women of color in the field of special education examine self-narrative approaches as an epistemological possibility for unpacking long-standing challenges in diversifying the special education workforce. Building on the P-12 to doctorate pipeline concept, the authors summarize the extant literature of teacher educators who have written disability-related testimonios, counternarratives, and autoethnographies. These approaches, seldom applied in the special education literature, offer different theoretical and methodological perspectives to those researching and preparing P-12 teachers to work with students labeled as having disabilities. The chapter concludes with a look toward the future of special education teacher education research, offering recommendations based on the literature and the authors’ enactments of testimonios.