Race and Equity in Special Education

In this webinar, panelists Mildred Boveda and Erica McCray will discuss issues related to race, equity, and intersectionality in special education. McCray will set the stage as a department chair and discuss issues surrounding race and equity over time. Boveda will share the results of a recent study investigating whether teacher educators are prepared to address equity. Boveda will also share a protocol for supporting teacher educators in an ethical manner along with skill sets for addressing colleagues in teacher education.

Mildred Boveda is an associate professor of education (special education) in the department of Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education at Penn State University. Boveda earned her doctorate of education in exceptional student education from Florida International University and her master of education in education policy and management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In her scholarship, she uses the terms “intersectional competence” and “intersectional consciousness” to refer to educators’ understanding of diversity and how students, families and colleagues have multiple sociocultural markers that intersect in complex and nuanced ways. She designed the Intersectional Competence Measure to assess teachers’ preparedness for an increasingly diverse student population. Boveda, who started her career as a special education teacher in Miami Dade County Public Schools, is a past president of the Division for Diverse and Exceptional Learners of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and past chair of the Diversity Caucus for the Teacher Education Division of CEC.

Erica D. McCray is director and associate professor in the School of Special Education, School Psychology, and Early Childhood Studies at the University of Florida. She earned her doctorate at the University of South Florida, Tampa. McCray’s experience as a special educator for students with behavioral and learning disabilities in elementary and middle school settings led to her interest in issues of equity and diversity. She is currently co-principal investigator of the CEEDAR Center, an Office of Special Education Programs funded technical assistance project as well as a National Science Foundation research project to broaden participation in engineering.