Call for Papers: Championing Children’s Linguistic Human Rights: Transformative possibilities at the intersections of language and disability in early care and education, Volume 13, No. 2 (June 2027)

2026-04-02

Guest Editors: Lilly Padia, PhD, Erikson Institute & Jessica Miguel, PhD, Cradle to Career Policy Institute

This special issue focuses on championing children at the intersections of multilingualism and disability in early childhood education and care. Young children and their families are often excluded from conversations on race, multilingualism, and disability in education, as conversations tend to focus on elementary and secondary schooling experiences. The impact of these multiple identities and systems of power begins, for many children, at birth or shortly thereafter, so attention must also begin with young children. Children who are multilingual and also labeled as disabled experience the world at the intersections of language and disability (Cioè-Peña, 2017). The specific systems that address language and disability often function as independent siloes, requiring separate identification, diagnosis, and/or pathology in order to access support. Disability critical race theory in education (DisCrit) posits that both racialization and disability are not just about the individual person or child, but about the systems of power that impact their lives (Annamma et al., 2013).

 

We draw on the frameworks of linguistic human rights (LHR) (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1997), which refers to the idea of language rights as human rights, and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Communication Bill of Rights (2024), which posits that all people have a right to communicate across all parts of their lives, to center young children’s experiences with multilingualism and disability. Experiences with language and disability for young children and families vary across nation-state borders, often dependent on national and local policies, regional ideologies, and social and cultural factors. This special issue centers the importance of  global early childhood experiences, disability and language in conversation with one another to address linguistic justice (Baker-Bell, 2020) at local, national, and global levels. We welcome articles  that focus on the transformative possibilities for the field of early care and education and move us towards a liberatory praxis that honors young children’s full identities.

 

Topics for submissions could include, but are not limited to:

  • Family experiences and dynamics with multilingualism and disability within and beyond systems like early intervention, early care and education, formal schooling, and medical institutions
  • Nonspoken (often called nonverbal) communication in multilingual households
  • Holistic assessment(s) of multilingual, disabled children
  • Early intervention considerations, issues, and experiences with language and disability or delay
  • Transnational understandings of and experiences with disability and related supports
  • Experiences of disabled children, families, and/or educators who use less commonly-represented languages (e.g. other than English, Spanish, Mandarin, French)
  • Considerations for culturally responsive-sustaining disability services and special education in heritage languages
  • Support for disabled students who are experiencing migration and/or displacement across nation-state borders
  • Centering race and ethnicity, including but not limited to Critical Race Theory, DisCrit, and Transborder DisCrit analyses, in language education with disabled students
  • Examinations of policies and regulations that impact access to education and care for multilingual children with disabilities and their families

 

We welcome articles that are written by authors across the globe, that represent research, policy, and practice in various countries, that are authored or co-authored by youth, families, and educators, and that attend to intersections of language and disability. We welcome a range of manuscript types, including but not limited to first-hand accounts, empirical research articles, policy/regulation reviews, and conceptual pieces. While GER requires that manuscripts be submitted in English, we invite authors to write about studies that utilize translanguaging in their data collection and methods.

Please send an abstract of no more than 500 words using a 12-point font to Drs. Padia and Miguel at championinglanguage@gmail.com by May 1, 2026, and write Global Education Review in the subject line of your email. Abstracts will be reviewed for fit, and you will be informed by May 15, 2026, if the article is invited for review. Full manuscripts will be due by November 1, 2026. The issue will be published in the summer of 2027.

 

Authors of articles invited for review are required to participate in a blind review of up to two articles submitted for publication in the same issue.

 

 

References

Annamma, S. A., Connor, D., & Ferri, B. (2013). Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): Theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability. Race ethnicity and education, 16(1), 1-31.

Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy. Routledge.

Cioè-Peña, M. (2021). Raciolinguistics and the education of emergent bilinguals labeled as disabled. The Urban Review, 53(3), 443-469.

National Joint Committee for the Communication Needs of Persons with Severe Disabilities. (2024). NJC Communication Bill of Rights (3rd ed.). https://www.asha.org/njc 

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1997). Human rights and language policy in education. In R. Wodak & D. Corson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education (pp. 55–65). Dordrecht: Springer.