Special Issue: Disability and Special Education

Much research on special education remains focused on its practical elements, often evaluating present operating conditions of special education as a service system. This includes work focused on practice improvement, evaluative projects of existing interventions or programs, and examinations of educator preparation, teaching practices, and policy decision-making. This work has been and continues to be valuable in identifying gaps in existing practice, particularly in ways that are legible to policymakers and school systems, in turn creating opportunities for improvement and accountability within formal systems.  

At the same time, such research contains important trade-offs and limitations. Dominant special education research often treats disability as a fixed variable, sidestepping theories that assert the social and historical construction of disability. Conceptualizing disability as a variable also favors certain methods that are viewed as generalizable and scalable (e.g. large-scale quantitative studies). Given the research aims, these studies are typically conducted by professionals for a professional audience, and only marginally center the voices of disabled students and scholars. Therefore, this special issue calls for historical and/or critical scholarship that unsettles assumptions in dominant research. Importantly, we seek to reorient the starting inquiry point by exclusively seeking scholarship from those with lived disability experience or close ties to disability communities. Moreover, amidst a hostile federal policy landscape that de-prioritizes and attacks disabled people and their services, it is urgent to platform disabled voices and research that asserts disabled people's humanity and self-expertise. 

This special issue on Disability and Special Education welcomes contributions related to disability in education and/or special education across all three of HER's usual submission categories (research articles, essays, and voices). In particular, we are seeking scholarship in the following three areas, though these are not meant to be exhaustive:

1. Historical: work that uses historical methods (such as archival methods, oral interviews, historical ethnography, etc.) or seeks to otherwise historically situate some aspect of special education and/or the experiences of disability in education. Pieces can cover any time period and any educational setting (e.g., formal school, institutions, home instruction, community-based educational organizations).
2. Critical: pieces that challenge the assumption that disability is a fixed category of difference. Work that highlights the constructed, contested, and historically situated nature of disability as a category of difference. This work could offer structural analysis and critique, and consider questions about power, privilege, and resources. We also welcome pieces that consider abolitionist approaches to special education or other radical alternative visions of special education.
3. Disability-led: pieces about special education written by and/or centering disabled scholars. In addition to work that also falls into the other two areas, we welcome reflections on special education or experience with disability/ies in schooling, personal writings, artwork, narrative work, and poetry. We welcome work from a variety of methodologies and formats, including autoethnography and action research.

Submissions

This portal is where potential contributors will submit both their abstract for consideration and their full manuscript. 

The Call is first for Abstracts or Descriptions (250 words); due January 1, 2027 and should include

•  A description of the topic
• How the topic connects to the special issue  
• A description of the main argument or intended argument

And if applicable:

• A description of the theoretical and/or empirical work that informs the manuscript 
• A discussion of the data and methods used in your analysis  
• A discussion of the manuscript's scholarly significance to the field of education

The Manuscripts for publication: due February 15, 2027

Research articles or essays, including (but not limited to) original research based on empirical studies, and theoretical essays grounded in literature. Research article or essay submissions should be no longer than 9,000 words.

Voices: Reflective Accounts of Education, written by students, teachers, parents, community members, and/or others involved in education, whose perspectives can inform policy, practice, and/or research. Submissions of this type generally contain a detailed narrative that weaves ideas, situations, and experiences together, and highlights key learnings. Please note that for this Special Issue, Voices submissions should be no longer than 5,500 words. 

 We strongly suggest review our general Guidelines for Authors, which can be found at: https://www.harvardeducationalreview.org/page/guidelines-for-authors

If you have questions about your submission, such as its topic, relevance, or format, please contact the special issue's Managing Editor, Luci Duffy lduffy@g.harvard.edu

Manuscripts reporting original research related to education should include: background and context and/or theoretical/conceptual framework, literature review, methods, findings and analysis, and discussion sections. The literature review should be relevant to the research topic and findings. All methodologies need to be clearly described and should match the research questions or stated purpose of the manuscript. The findings should be clearly stated, and the arguments set forth should emerge from the analysis of the data presented in the manuscript. Accepted manuscripts typically include clear implications of the research and are accessible to HER’s generalist readership.
HER accepts manuscripts of up to 9,000 words, inclusive of abstract, appendices, and references, double-spaced, with references in APA 7 format. While HER does not have a minimum word count, accepted manuscripts tend to be at least 5,500 words.

This call is intended for submission of manuscripts in the form of an academic essay.   
An essay should have a well-developed argument with a clear purpose. A good essay will not merely summarize previous work but will advance an original argument or provide a useful synthesis of a particular area of inquiry. Essays should employ compelling evidence to justify the author’s claims. Evidence can draw from (but is not limited to) practice, theory, personal experience, and/or empirics. Strong essays will be engaging to readers, logically structured, and have an internally cohesive and coherent argument.
Successful essays can take many forms, including:
· Literature reviews
· Normative arguments
· Explorations of theory in practice
· Articulation of promising avenues of research to pursue and/or gaps in a particular field  
HER accepts manuscripts of up to 9,000 words, inclusive of abstract, appendices, and references, double-spaced, with references in APA 7 format. While HER does not have a minimum word count, accepted manuscripts tend to be at least 5,500 words.

The Harvard Educational Review recognizes the value of experiential knowledge and is committed to featuring the voices of people engaged in various educational activities around the world. We welcome reflective pieces written by students, teachers, parents, community members, and others involved in education whose perspectives can inform policy, practice, and/or research. The power of Voices: Reflective Accounts of Education articles rests primarily in the voice of the author(s) and its rich grounding in practice, which may be informed by theory and research. Submissions generally contain a detailed narrative that weaves together ideas, situations, and experiences and highlights key learnings. For examples of Voices pieces, please see Alvarez et al. (2021) and Snow (2021).
HER accepts manuscripts of up to 9,000 words, inclusive of abstract, appendices, and references, double-spaced, with references in APA 7 format. While HER does not have a minimum word count, accepted manuscripts tend to be at least 5,500 words.

HER welcomes submissions in addition to the Research article, Essay, and Voices categories. If your manuscript does not correspond to any of the above categories, please select this option.
On submission, you will be asked to provide a statement of up to 500 words that describes the nature of your manuscript and why it is a good fit for the journal.

HER accepts manuscripts of up to 9,000 words, inclusive of abstract, appendices, and references, double-spaced, with references in APA 7 format. While HER does not have a minimum word count, accepted manuscripts tend to be at least 5,500 words.

This call is intended only for submission of manuscripts that have gone through the review process and been invited by the editorial board to be revised and resubmitted. Please do not use this category for manuscripts that have not been reviewed by the full editorial board. Please include a separate letter to the editors addressing the specific recommendations made in their letter to you. If you have any questions, please contact the invitations editor at HER_invites@gse.harvard.edu or the content editor at HER_manuscripts@gse.harvard.edu

Thank you.

The Harvard Educational Review is pausing the invitations process effective June 4, 2026, at 11:59 pm US Eastern time. The invitations process will resume on October 5, 2026. You may, however, continue to submit pieces through the Open Call.

All invited manuscripts already in process are NOT affected in any way by the pause. Please reference your Invitation letter for details on submission.

For additional information, please visit the Article Submission FAQ at the bottom of this webpage: https://hep.gse.harvard.edu/journals/about-harvard-educational-review/ 

Or feel free to reach out by email to the Co-Chairs, Jacob Wolf and Hwa Yoo, at HER_community@gse.harvard.edu.

 The 2026-2027 Harvard Educational Review Editorial Board