Researching Special Education: Using and Expanding Upon Genetic Epistemology Constructs

This chapter describes how Piaget’s seminal ideas about knowing and learning are leveraged as one pathway to access, equity, and inclusion for students with disabilities. Specifically, genetic epistemology is positioned as a way to challenge the binary of knowing as performance, and an alternate depiction of learning and learning environments is defined that grounds learning within children’s adaptive activity, positioning students’ knowledge as powerful and diverse as opposed to deficient. The author argues that even if they engage with learning situations in unexpected ways, their knowing and reasoning cannot be conceptualized as deficient. It must be conceptualized as uniquely theirs. The chapter concludes with suggestions for researchers to use genetic epistemology in combination with other frameworks to center students’ abilities and discourage their marginalization.