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Early childhood and early elementary are key times when children develop internal and external antifat attitudes; thus, it is necessary to better understand the available children’s literature around fatness.This paper aims to examine children's picture books with fat protagonists to better understand the current landscape of children's literature. Drawing on relevant literature around fat characters and the fat studies movement, this critical content analysis considers five children’s books featuring fat protagonists.

This study uses critical content analysis to analyze texts featuring fat protagonists, including two rounds of initial reading and analysis. Using lenses of critical literacy and critical multicultural analysis, the author looks for common themes, silences and absences in the texts, images and peritext.

This paper identifies themes of characters initially internalizing antifatness, then pushing back against antifat bias toward existing with joy and without stigma. Several of these texts even draw on the history of fat activism, highlighting societal critique and a potential activist component of children’s literature with fat protagonists.

The study has a small number of books, due to the limited number of texts that fit the study parameters.

The paper concludes with examples of scaffolding for teachers and parents to have conversations with young children about antifat bias while also acknowledging notable absences, particularly boy protagonists.

These themes illustrate the power of young children to push back against antifat bias and critique oppressive social structures.

There have been very few studies looking at antifatness in children’s picture books. With more books with fat protagonists coming out in the 2020s, this study offers an understanding of the themes present, while also emphasizing the need for an intersectional approach to literature with fat protagonists.

Values have long guided special education services and supports for students with extensive support needs; over the past four decades, those values have been backed by research evidence demonstrating the critical nature of values related to inclusive education, self-determination, and seeking strengths and assets. In this chapter, we investigate these values and their supporting research, documenting strengths and needs in extant research. We emphasize the need to continue to embrace and maintain these values while pursuing research that addresses research gaps while centering the priorities, perspectives, and preferences of people with extensive support needs.

Given the historical legacy of policing Black bodies, this research focuses on the structures of anti-Blackness within school policing and the strategies students of Color activists use as they work to defund or abolish police departments in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

Specifically, this article looks to Twitter as a counter-storytelling space for students of Color activists to organize and build movements to end anti-Black school policing. Through the frameworks of critical race theory (CRT) and Black critical theory (BlackCrit), this research applies inductive coding to analyze 42 Twitter posts from three students of Color-led organizations based in Los Angeles.

This document analysis presents four themes, which describe four dominant strategies students of Color activists use in their campaigns to defund or abolish school police in the LAUSD: (1) centering Blackness and Black student experiences, (2) making demands for the elimination of funding and support for school police, (3) calling for a shift in funding to support Black students and (4) employing multiple tactics concurrently.

These findings demonstrate the importance of developing and centering a critical understanding of anti-Blackness to achieve racial and educational justice within social movements.

Moreover, the demands of students of Color activists reflect visions of public schools free from anti-Black school policing.

In this article, we highlight ways in which disability critical race theory (DisCrit) (Annamma et al., 2013), inclusive education and community-based participatory research (CBPR) can be used within professional development schools (PDS) to provide students with disabilities with more access to inclusive classrooms. At a grade 4–6 elementary school, we developed a model of a critical PDS to promote inclusive education and facilitate the transition of students of color with disabilities from self-contained to inclusive classrooms. We conducted semi-structured interviews and used action plan meetings with school administrators, teachers, professionals and students with disabilities and their parents to assess the impact of our critical PDS model. Findings suggest this model had a positive impact on administrators’ and teachers’ critical consciousness, ideological and instructional practices, students of color with disabilities’ social, academic and personal outcomes, as well as a schoolwide culture of inclusion and social justice. This study can inform tailored professional development efforts to improve educators’ inclusive practices.

We conducted semi-structured interviews and used action plan meetings with school administrators, teachers, professionals and students with disabilities and their parents to assess the impact of our critical PDS model.

The findings of this study suggest this model had a positive impact on administrators’ and teachers’ critical consciousness, ideological and instructional practices, students of color with disabilities’ social, academic and personal outcomes, as well as a schoolwide culture of inclusion and social justice.

This study can inform tailored professional development efforts aiming to improve educators’ inclusive practices.

We developed a model of a critical PDS to promote inclusive education and facilitate the transition of students of color with disabilities from self-contained to inclusive classrooms.

The lack of a proper register to store, match and display information on the adapted property has led to a waste of resources and prolonged delays in matching the disabled and elderly people with appropriate properties. This paper presents the development of a Housing Adaptations Register with user-matching functionalities for different mobility categories. The developed system accurately captures and documents adapted home information to facilitate the automated matching of disabled/aged applicants needing an adapted home with suitable property using banding, mobility and suitability index.

A theoretical review was conducted to identify parameters and develop adaptations register construct. A survey questionnaire approach to rate the 111 parameters in the register as either moderate, desirable or essential before system development and application. The system development relied on DSS modelling to support data-driven decision-making based on the decision table method to represent property information for implementing the decision process. The system is validated through a workshop, four brainstorming sessions and three focus group exercises.

Development of a choice-based system that enables the housing officers or the Housing Adaptations Register coordinators to know the level of adaptation to properties and match properties quickly with the applicants based on their mobility status. The merits of the automated system include the development of a register to capture in real-time adapted home information to facilitate the automated matching of disabled/aged applicants. A “choice-based” system that can map and suggest a property that can easily be adapted and upgraded from one mobility band to the other.

The development of a housing adaptation register helps social housing landlords to have a real-time register to match, map and upgrade properties for the most vulnerable people in our society. It saves time and money for the housing associations and the local authorities through stable tenancy for adapted homes. Potentially, it will promote the independence of aged and disabled people and can reduce their dependence on social and healthcare services.

This system provides the local authorities with objective and practical tools that may be used to assess, score, prioritise and select qualified people for appropriate accommodation based on their needs and mobility status. It will provide a record of properties adapted with their features and ensure that matching and eligibility decisions are consistent and uniform.

This study aims to explore the level of independence among persons with disabilities (PWDs) towards their use of public buildings’ facilities, as well as assess the anxiety and relevant challenges regarding such use.

In a cross-sectional survey design, 91 consenting PWDs were recruited via purposive sampling at diverse locations and invited to complete self-report questionnaires on their use of public buildings’ facilities.

Only 19 PWDs (20.9%) were able to independently use such facilities. The participants’ level of anxiety, observed to be mostly severe (41.7%), was significantly associated with sex and affected body region (p < 0.05). Most PWDs identified “lack of amenities” (85.7%), “inconvenience” (78%) and “safety issues” (59.4%) as relevant challenges towards the use of public buildings’ facilities.

This research emphasises the urgent need to universally improve PWDs’ level of independence towards the use of public buildings’ facilities alongside eradicating anxiety and challenges experienced towards such use. Accessibility ought to be promoted among PWDs, with specific attention given to women and those affected in multiple body regions; as such populations are prone to experiencing substantial anxiety. This approach should entail the provision of barrier-free facilities as well as ensuring their safe and convenient use by PWDs.

This study sought and provided key feedback from PWDs on the current built environment, which ought to be considered by relevant stakeholders to improve accessibility, promote well-being and contribute towards meeting the global goals of reducing inequality and making cities/communities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

This review addresses how student organizations are conceptually framed in the scholarly literature—organizations the authors referred to as “ethnicized student organizations” or “ESOs,” which include both Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) student organizations and ethnically white student organizations such as mainstream fraternities/sororities and clubs that are normalized as not having a racial/ethnic affiliation.

Critical race theory informs the analysis of 175 articles that address ESOs from 2002 to 2016.

Analysis revealed that a majority of scholarship conceptualizes ESOs in ways that can minimize the role of institutional whiteness where they are positioned as either serving or hindering both individual students and institutional goals. Findings also reveal a smaller body of literature that emphasized institutionalized power dynamics and honors the transformative work of BIPOC students through ESOs.

Despite widespread public commitments to diversity among institutions, whiteness remains a core institutional presence. This study illustrates the relationships among student organizations, white supremacy and higher education transformation.