Dr. Scot Danforth is well-known leader in the growing area of Disability Studies in Education, a multidisciplinary field of educational research exploring disabilities as sociopolitical constructions and construing the disabled community as an oppressed minority group. He is co-founder of the Disability Studies in Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (http://ced.ncsu.edu/2/dse/). His research has explored the roles of professional and layperson discourses in the social and political construction of disability. Additionally, his publications have analyzed the historical and philosophical development of the field of special education. He has written a wide range of books and articles in the areas of special education teacher preparation, working with students with social and emotional difficulties, and classroom management. He is Associate Professor and Department Chair in the Division of Teaching of Learning, University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Terry Jo Smith is an Associate Professor of Special Education at National Louis-University in Chicago. She has extensive experience teaching students labeled emotionally/behaviorally disordered in inner-city schools. She has an abiding interest in teacher research, particularly in relationship to the social, cultural and political dimensions of schooling and how these are enacted in school relationships and curriculum. She has worked with a group of teacher/researchers for several years, researching the impact of constructivist pedagogy in a broad range of educational settings. Currently, she is engaging in research at a school in a youth detention center where she is developing constructivist curriculum with teachers and students. Smith's teaching, research and scholarship spring from a passionate commitment to social justice.
