A Systematic Literature Review of Intersectionality and Disability in Education

Overview and Scope

• Article: A systematic literature review of intersectionality and disability in education by Anastasia Liasidou & Andros Gregoriou (2024).
• Journal: British Journal of Sociology of Education (2024), Volume 45, Issue 4, pages 584–608.
• Aim: Synthesize empirical analyses and applications of intersectionality in discussions of disability in education; foreground disability at the intersections with other axes of identity and disadvantage to understand perceptions, inclusion/exclusion, and educational dis/advantage.
• Context: Intersectionality gained attention but disability has been underrepresented in multi-axial analyses; the review addresses how disability intersects with race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, language, migration status, citizenship, geography, and other markers of difference.
• Core argument: Disability should be conceptualized as a politicized marker of difference within intersectional analyses to illuminate power asymmetries, social injustices, and injustices in education beyond impairment alone.
• Time frame of included literature: peer‑reviewed articles published in English between 2013–$2013--2023$.
• Corpus characteristics: 25 articles total; $17$ qualitative studies and $8$ quantitative studies.
• Data sources and search strategy: multi-database, multi-method approach; data extracted from two databases (PRIMO and SCOPUS) with a snowballing step from references; literature identified and screened in two phases; “birds-eye” screening of titles/abstracts followed by full-text screening.
• Quality appraisal: Used Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tool for study quality assessment.
• Ethical stance: Recognizes limitations and debates around bias and subjectivity in qualitative synthesis; emphasizes transparency and reflexivity in the review process.
• Key theoretical anchor: Crenshaw’s (1991) concept of intersectionality; disability treated as a central axis at the crossroads with other identities (race, class, gender, language, migration status, etc.).

Research Questions and Rationale

• Primary questions guiding the review:
  • What intersectional dimensions of disability experience are explored in education literature?
  • How do students with disabilities experience discrimination and exclusion at intersectional levels?
  • What intersectionality-based policy and practice implications are discussed in the articles?
• Rationale: To move beyond a deficit-focused, impairment-centered approach to disability in education and to reveal how social injustices operate at multiple, interlocking identities.
• Key concepts introduced: disability, intersectionality, inclusion, dis/advantage, dis/ablism, ableism, institutional power, pedagogy, policy."$\text{dis/ablism}$" and related terms appear across the included studies.

Methodology in Depth

• Review type and design:
  • Systematic literature review with an intra-categorical (disability-centered) intersectional frame.
  • Adopted a mixed-methods, multi‑arm data strategy (data-based convergent synthesis) to integrate qualitative and quantitative findings via transformation (qualitising/quantitising) so that results can be synthesized on a common plane.
  • Rationale for mixed methods: limited number of explicitly intersectional quantitative studies; qualitative methods capture complexity and context; growing value in quantitative intersectional analyses as empirical testing of theories.
• Data synthesis approach:
  • Iterative, three-stage synthesis inspired by thematic synthesis:
    1) Code text across articles for meaning and content.
    2) Develop descriptive themes.
    3) Generate analytical themes and overarching constructs.
  • Emphasis on triangulation and cross-study comparisons to identify convergence/divergence and to develop policy-relevant insights.
• Critical appraisal and quality assessment:
  • CASP (2022) tool used to appraise strengths/limitations of included studies.
  • Acknowledges debates about objectivity and bias in systematic reviews, especially for qualitative research; notes that some studies provided detailed methodological transparency (e.g., threats to validity) while others did not.
• Inclusivity of study designs:
  • Included qualitative and quantitative studies; some articles explicitly used intersectionality language (e.g., “intersectionality”) while others discussed interlocking systems of oppression at the nexus of disability with race, gender, class, etc., without explicit use of the term.
• Exclusion criteria (three criteria):
  1) An article used an intersectional framework but did not focus on disability as the predominant marker of difference.
  2) The article was purely theoretical about disability intersections (no empirical data).
  3) The article did not focus on primary/secondary education (e.g., post-secondary programs excluded).
• Search strategy and data collection:
  • Phase 1: PRIMO (library resources) extended search window from five to ten years due to sparse results; keywords included disability, intersection, school, education, 2013–$2013--2023$.
  • Phase 2: SCOPUS database included; two search streams yielded $195$ (SCOPUS) and $607$ (PRIMO) hits; applied English-language peer-reviewed filter.
  • Snowballing: references of selected studies yielded $40$ additional articles; overall, 25 articles met criteria for inclusion.
  • Screening reliability: two coders independently screened and extracted data; a second coder from a different discipline reviewed a portion of records; discrepancies resolved by discussion; intra-rater reliability strengthened by independent processes; two coders ensured cross-checking for consistency.
• Data extraction and dataset details:
  • Table 1 (provided in the article) lists 25 studies with author(s), year, aims, methodological framework, participants, and grade levels/educational settings.
  • Data extraction focused on settings (primary/secondary, schools, special schools), populations (students with disabilities, parents, teachers, administrators, general public), and contexts (race, migration, language, gender, class, geography).

Included Studies: Table 1 Snapshot (25 Studies)

Note: The following summarizes Table 1 items (author(s), year, aims, framework, participants, grade level/setting).

• Wallace, Karangwa, and Bayisenge (2019): Aim to examine subjectivities and lived experiences of girls with disabilities marginalized by gender, class, and disability; Method: Interviews and three focus groups; Participants: 16 Rwandan girls with disabilities; Setting: Nine-year Basic Education School.
• Cahill (2021): Examines intertwining of SEN and social class in post-primary school choice in Ireland; Ethnographic study; Observers and interviews; Participants: 30 students, 8 parents, 8 teachers; Setting: a DEIS post-primary school.
• Waitoller, Nguyen, and Super (2019): Explores how Black and Latinx parents of students with disabilities navigated charter-school neoliberal practices; Methods: Interviews, observations; Setting: K–12 charter schools; Participants: 24 parents of students with disabilities.
• Preece and Lessner Lištiaková (2021): Investigates families with autism in rural coastal England; Methods: Semi-structured interviews; Participants: Grandparents and young people from 21 families; Setting: Schools and special schools.
• Stutzman and Lowenhaupt (2022): Explores teachers’ and administrators’ views on needs of students with disabilities whose first language is not English; Methods: Interviews; Participants: Administrators, ESL teachers, general/ SENC teachers; Setting: Suburban school district (USA).
• McGee (2014): Examines disability status and comorbid identities in exposure to peer victimization; Method: Survey; Participants: 11th graders; Setting: High school (Oregon).
• Oliver and Singal (2017): Examines migrant families’ interactions with schools at intersections of disability, migration, social class, gender; Methods: Exploratory visits and semi-structured interviews; Participants: 10 teachers and parents of children with SEN; Setting: Special school in east England.
• Singh et al. (2021): Investigates distribution of students across school types based on SEN or forced migration background; Method: Interviews; Participants: 2 students (high school focus), educational experts, school authorities; Setting: High school.
• Padía and Traxler (2021): Intersections of race, ableism, documentation status and who is rendered deserving; Methods: Interviews, memos, reflections; Participants: 2 students; Setting: High school.
• Bešić, Paleczek, and Gasteiger-Klicpera (2020a): Attitudes toward inclusion of refugee girls with/without disabilities in Austrian primary schools; Method: Interviews; Participants: 1377 (general public) across primary schools.
• Bešić et al. (2020b): Attitudes toward inclusion depending on disability type and refugee status; Method: Vignette surveys; Participants: 2307 (general public).
• Tefera and Fischman (2020): Focus on citation rates and responses to citations for racial disproportionality in special education; Method: Interviews; Settings: multiple grades across elementary–high schools; Participants: 11 district/school leaders, 8 teachers, etc.
• Tefera et al. (2023): Aftermath of citations for racial disparities in special education and discipline; Method: Mixed methods; Participants: 30 educators; Settings: Two suburban districts.
• Collins et al. (2023): School climate experiences of Black boys with/without EBD; Setting: Southeastern U.S.; Participants: 16,031 students (state-wide survey).
• Kangas (2018): ELs with disabilities—policy and practice; Setting: K–5 elementary with large EL/disabled population; Framework: Qualitative case study; Participants: 10 focal teachers, 23 key professionals.
• Chatzitheochari and Butler-Rees (2023): Stigma at intersection of disability and social class; Setting: mainstream English secondary schools; Participants: 35 interviews with students in final year (Year 11).
• Gillborn (2015): Intersections of racism with class and gender in meaning of disability in schools; Setting: state-maintained schools in England; Participants: 77 Black middle-class parents and children.
• Mendoza et al. (2020): Intersections of race, gender, disability and risk for juvenile justice; Setting: public schools; Sample: approx. 928,940 students across databases.
• Miller and Kurth (2022): Photovoice with disabled girls of color—how schools produce inequities through school geographies/tools; Setting: middle/high schools; Participants: 6 disabled girls of color; Teachers: 5.
• Miller (2023): Textual, spatial, and technological supports for disabled girls of color; Setting: middle/high schools; Participants: 6 disabled girls; Teachers: 5 (interviews/observations).
• Shifrer (2023): Ninth-grade math course placement at intersection of learning disability, race, SES; Setting: U.S. high schools; Participants: ≈15,000 ninth graders (survey).
• King et al. (2018): Intersections of disability and LGBQ status with victimization and suicidal ideation; Setting: high schools; Participants: 11,364 students (Youth Risk Behavior Survey 2015).
• Graham et al. (2023): Suspensions/disproportionality for Indigenous students and those in out-of-home care; Setting: Queensland state schools; Data: longitudinal suspension/discipline records.
• Hernández-Saca and Kahn (2019): Interrogating disability epistemologies through collective dis/ability intersectional autoethnographies; Setting: Education/Qualitative.
• Adams and Roach (2023): School climate perspectives for Black girls with/without IEPs; Setting: Georgia high school district; Participants: 23,903 students (survey).
• Miller (2023): (duplicate entry with Miller 2023 above)—focus on disabled girls of color; see Miller 2023.
• Waitoller, Nguyen, and Super (2019): Neoliberal charter schools and intersections of race/disability (additional context).
• Collins et al. (2023) (No Safe Space) – listed above.

Intersections: Disability and Other Axes of Difference

• Core finding: Disability intersects with race/ethnicity, gender, class, language, migration status, citizenship, sexuality, geography, and Indigenous status, producing overlapping forms of advantage and disadvantage in schooling contexts.
• Notable patterns across studies:
  • Disability identities are often entangled with racialized and gendered discourses, producing compounded stigma and discrimination in schools.
  • Language needs and disability needs are sometimes conflated, leading to misidentification or over/under-identification of students (e.g., English-language learners with disabilities).
  • Immigration/migrant status can both confer privilege and underprivilege for disabled children, depending on country context and local policies (paradoxical effects observed in Oliver & Singal, Padía & Traxler).
  • Disproportionality in identification and discipline often linked to teacher biases, racism, and gendered expectations.
  • Socioeconomic status interacts with disability to shape access to supports, opportunities, and risk of stigma.
• Contextual contrasts in disability and intersectionality:
  • In Rwanda, color as an axis of oppression interacts differently with disability than in the USA, illustrating the context-sensitivity of intersectional analysis.
  • In the US, disabled girls of color face distinct, location-specific barriers in schooling, including spatial and textual resources and disciplinary practices.

Theoretical Framing and Key Concepts

• Intersectionality as a lens:
  • Origin: Crenshaw (1991) introduced intersectionality to show how multiple identities (gender, race, class, sexuality) intersect in non-additive ways to produce oppression not captured by single-axis analyses.
  • In education, intersectionality reframes disability as a politicized marker of difference that interacts with other identities to produce complex experiences of inclusion/exclusion.
• Disability as central axis:
  • Some studies explicitly place disability at the core of the analytical framework, arguing that disability experiences are deeply shaped by social conditions and power relations (ableism, disablism, racism, sexism, etc.).
  • Other studies employ intersectionality alongside disability to illuminate how impairment effects are interwoven with social, cultural, and political structures.
• Related theoretical lenses used in some articles:
  • Critical Race Theory, feminist theory, postcolonial insights, trauma-informed approaches, and culturally sustaining pedagogy.
  • Neoliberal-ableism: the critique that contemporary education systems push toward an able-bodied, white, middle-class norm, which marginalizes disabled students.
• Implications of theory for policy and practice:
  • Calls for intersectionality-based policy analysis (IBPA) to reveal hidden power structures and to inform reforms that address multiple axes of inequality.
  • Emphasis on trauma-informed and culturally responsive pedagogy integrated with intersectional analysis.

Policy, Practice, and Educational Implications

• Equity-oriented reforms:
  • Policies should explicitly address multiple intersecting identities rather than treating disability in isolation.
  • Schools should build capacity to meet the needs of multiply marginalized students, including trauma-informed and culturally responsive approaches.
• Systems-level recommendations:
  • Implement multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) with an explicit intersectional lens to identify and address compounded risk factors.
  • Develop bilingual special education practices to separate language- and disability-related needs and provide targeted supports for multilingual learners with disabilities.
  • Foster community partnerships to counteract disability and intersectionality-driven stigma and to increase access to services.
• Practice-level recommendations:
  • Train educators to recognize bias in identification and discipline processes and to challenge discourses of normality that marginalize disabled students.
  • Promote inclusive school climates that mitigate peer victimization, particularly for students at multiple margins (race, gender, disability, sexuality, etc.).
  • Trauma-sensitive and culturally responsive approaches should be integrated with inclusive education policies.
• Specific policy concepts:
  • IBPA (Intersectionality-Based Policy Analysis) as a framework to analyze and transform policies impacting multiply marginalized students with disabilities.
  • Recognition of ‘neoliberal-ableism’ and strategies to decenter normative ideals of the “ideal student.”

Ethical Considerations and Student Voice

• Participation and voice:
  • Noted limitation: relatively few studies included direct reports from disabled students themselves (eight studies explicitly included student voices).
  • Ethical challenges in researching with children and trauma exposure may restrict student participation; authors call for more systematic inclusion of disabled students’ perspectives.
• Epistemic justice:
  • Emphasis on foregrounding disabled students’ experiences to challenge ableist epistemologies and to inform transformative educational change.

Trajectories on Migration, Refugee Status, and Language

• Migration and disability intersection: several studies show that displacement, forced migration, and refugee status intersect with disability to shape educational experiences, access to services, and disciplinary outcomes.
• Language as a compounding factor:
  • Multilingual learners with disabilities face risks of misidentification and insufficient bilingual supports, which compounds exclusion in schooling contexts.
• Citizenship and documentation status:
  • Immigration status, citizenship, and access to documents influence how resources and rights are distributed to disabled students.

Traumatic and Community Contexts

• Trauma-informed perspectives:
  • Forced migration experiences, living in out-of-home care, and experiences of racism/colonial mental health legacies are recognized as trauma factors that intersect with disability and education.
• Community-level dynamics:
  • Community discourses of difference and spatial segregation can mirror in schools, reinforcing exclusionary practices or shaping inclusive narratives.

Methodological Reflections and Limitations

• Strengths:
  • First comprehensive attempt to synthesize intersectionality and disability in education across a decade (2013–$2023$).
  • Mixed-methods approach allowed integration of rich qualitative insights with quantitative larger-scale data.
• Limitations:
  • Limited number of eligible discrete studies meeting strict inclusion criteria; heterogeneity across contexts and measures.
  • Inherent challenges of qualitative synthesis, including potential bias in coding and interpretation; some degree of subjectivity in study selection and synthesis.
• Recommendations for future reviews:
  • Broaden inclusion to non-English studies where possible; consider post-secondary and other educational contexts with caution.
  • Increase emphasis on student voices and longitudinal designs to capture dynamic intersectional experiences over time.

Conclusions and Future Research Directions

• Central conclusions:
  • Disability intersects with multiple identities in education to produce complex, context-sensitive forms of oppression and advantage.
  • Explicitly recognizing and analyzing these intersections is essential for equitable and just educational reforms.
  • An intersectionality-based policy analysis framework (IBPA) holds promise for transforming policy to address multiply marginalized students’ needs.
• Policy and practice implications:
  • Implement intersectionality-informed teacher training, curriculum, assessment, and leadership development.
  • Develop trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and language-conscious pedagogies to support multiply marginalized students with disabilities.
• Suggested future research avenues:
  • More empirical studies including disabled students’ voices; deeper exploration of intersections with sexual orientation and religious identities.
  • Expanded investigations into non-disabled students’ biases and how they propagate disability-by-race-by-class discourses.
  • Longitudinal analyses across diverse national and local contexts to trace how policy changes interact with intersectional dynamics over time.
• Final takeaway:
  • An explicit, principled intersectional lens is necessary to understand and address the layered and mutually reinforcing inequalities faced by multiply marginalized students with disabilities, in order to achieve meaningful educational equity.

Appendix: Key Concepts and Notation

• Core terms (paraphrased from article):
  • Intersectionality: analytic framework for examining how multiple social identities intersect at micro, meso, and macro levels to shape experiences of advantage and disadvantage.
  • Disability: treated as a central axis of difference, not merely impairment; connected to power, stigma, and social barriers in education.
  • Dis/ablism: social and institutional processes that produce and sustain disability-related disadvantage.
  • Neoliberal-ableism: governance regime pressuring students to conform to an able-bodied, normatively white, middle-class ideal.
  • IBPA: Intersectionality-Based Policy Analysis framework for evaluating and guiding policy toward equity and social justice in education.

(Note on formatting: All numerical data and ranges are represented in LaTeX-style notation within this summary as $…$ where appropriate. For example, the publication window is $2013--2023$, sample sizes are expressed as $N=7{,}091$, etc.)