TC Affiliations:
Faculty Expertise:
Educational Background
- B.A. English,
- M.A. Special Education,
- Ph.D., University of Missouri-St. Louis
Scholarly Interests
disability studies in education; inclusive education; education of students with significant disabilities; inclusive education in international contexts; teacher preparation for inclusive education; qualitative inquiry
Selected Publications
Journal Publications:
Neufeld, M., Naraian, S., & Najib, A. (2025). Refusal as a praxis of teaching inclusively. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 1–19.
Naraian, S. Neufeld, M. & Bae, Y. (2024). Remembering to feel: Narrating and Teaching without Boundaries. Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education. 2(1), 1-21.
Naraian, S. (2021). Making inclusion matter: Critical disability studies and teacher education. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 53(3), 298-313
Naraian, S. (2020). What does inclusion mean in the post-human era? Journal of Disability Studies in Education, 1, 1-21.
Naraian, S. (2019). Precarious, debilitated, ordinary: Rethinking (in)capacity for inclusion. Curriculum Inquiry, 49(4), 464-484.
Naraian, S., Newhouse, K. & Leeper, R. (2019). ‘The more I use the technology, I know what I’m capable of doing’: Access and the discourse of capacity. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 21(1), 207–217.
Naraian, S. & Schelssinger, S. (2018). Becoming an inclusive educator: Agentive maneuverings in collaboratively taught classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 71, 179-189.
Naraian, S. & Schelssinger, S. (2017). When theory meets the “reality of reality”: Reviewing the sufficiency of the social model of disability as a foundation for teacher preparation for inclusive education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 44(1), 81-100.
Naraian, S. (2016). Spatializing student learning to re-imagine the “place” of inclusion. Teachers College Record, 118(12) 1-46.
Books:
Amrhein, B. & Naraian, S. (2022) Reading Inclusion Divergently: Articulations From Around The World. Emerald Publishing.
Naraian, S. & Schlessinger, S. (2021) Narratives of Inclusive Teaching: Stories of “becoming” in the field. Peter Lang
Naraian, S. (2017). Teaching for inclusion: Eight Principles for Effective and Equitable Practice. In A. J. Artiles and E. B. Kozleski (eds.) Disability, Culture and Equity book series. Teachers College Press.
Current Projects
(Re)assembling Inclusion: Perspectives of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities
(Supported by a grant from the Spencer Foundation # 202400024)
How do students with intellectual/developmental disabilities feel about school? Avoiding a reliance on langugage-based methods, this project uses an arts-based approach to inquire into student imaginigs of school. Conducted over a the course of a school year (2023-2024), we worked with two groups of 5-6 students over a total of 16 art-making sessions. Students created art in accordion books as they came together around focal questions about school and learning. Collectively, they invite us to inquire into inclusive processes in new ways.
Our learnings from this project lead to the curation of an exhibit Sensory Interruptions at the Digital Futures Institute, Teachers College, in March of 2025.
Publications:
Naraian, S. & Guarino, M.S. (2026). The affordance of sense: Worlding disability in research. Curriculum Inquiry, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2026.2688805
*Guarino, M. & Naraian, S. (2026). Unfolding towards inclusion: Disability as method in arts based research. Research in Arts and Education, 2026(1), 77-98. https://doi.org/10.54916/rae.163470
Naraian, S. & Guarino, M. (2026). Worlding practices for non-speaking students. In D. Connor and J. Valle (Eds.) Rethinking Disability: A Disability Studies Approach to Inclusive Practices. Routledge.
Teacher Education Practices for Inclusive Education: A Paradigm Shift to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals.
Supported by Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration. (2023). Sponsored by Govt. of India.A research collaboration with the School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Management, Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha, India.
Publications:
Naraian, S. & Guduru, R. (in preparation). Bringing forward "what's in the back of my mind": A cartography of stillness and movement in professional development for inclusion. To be submitted to Teaching and Teacher Education.
A posthumanist disability studies in education project on teachers' experiences
Supported by Dean’s Competitive Grant for Tenured Faculty (awarded May 2020). The project inquire into the experiences of 4 teachers (all graduates of the Elementary Inclusive Education Program at Teachers College) to understand inclusive teaching as an embodied phenomenon.
Publications:
*Neufeld, M., Naraian, S., & Najib, A. (2025). Refusal as a praxis of teaching inclusively. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2025.2492726
*Naraian, S. Neufeld, M. & Bae, Y. (2024). Remembering to feel: Becoming-with in narrative inquiry with an inclusive educator. Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education. 2(1), 1-21.
*Neufeld, M. & Naraian, S. (2024). Getting Lost with artifacts in teacher inquiry. Qualitative Research, 0/0 https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241306218
*Naraian, S. & Neufeld, M., & Brown, T. (under review). Travel(ing) tales of inclusion: Speculative practices for thinking-with. International Journal of Inclusive Education.