Ableism is a system of oppression in which inclusion and exclusion are legitimised based on abilities. It was first named by disabled people’s social movements several decades ago and theorised by Disability Studies scholars to criticise structures and ideologies that produce narrow ideas of normality and productivity tied to able-bodiedness. Ableism is based on the general presumption of able-bodiedness and results, among other things, in the construction of disabled people as ‘others’ (Chouinard, 1997). This means ‘that one’s ability to approximate the able-bodied norm, influences multiple facets of life: such as the character and quality of interpersonal relations, economic prospects, and degrees of physical and social access to various life spaces’ (Chouinard, 1997, p. 380).

Critical voices suggest that ableism only rephrases an already existing debate (that of discrimination against disabled people). But Disability Studies scholars consistently argue that ‘Ableism is not just a matter of ignorance or negative attitudes towards disabled people; it is a trajectory of perfection, a deep way of thinking about bodies, wholeness, permeability and how certain clusters of people are en-abled via valued entitlements’ (Campbell, 2019, p. 146). Furthermore, drawing parallels with sexism and racism, ableism describes the hierarchisation of humans based on abilities, ability expectations or ability attributions (Wolbring, 2008).

Ableism is increasingly referenced not only in English-language literature, but also in several other languages, including French, Portuguese and German – and often within the field of education. Thus, ableism seems to be a thriving theoretical concept that is discussed by scholars and activists in a growing number of languages around the globe. In the light of the increasing number of publications referencing ableism, a systematic overview of the theory and research on this concept seems promising to both identify in which disciplines and fields of study ableism has (not) received attention so far, and to explore to which extent ableism has been explored theoretically and/or empirically.

The aim of our paper is to present first answers to these questions by introducing the findings of our forthcoming scoping review of ableism. The structure of our presentation is the following: First, we introduce the concept of ableism and its background in theory and activism. Second, we discuss the growing interest in ableism and argue for the need to systematically map the existing theory and research on this concept. Third, we elaborate on our approach to conducting this scoping review and fourth, we present our findings regarding areas of focus/fields of study in the existing research on ableism as well as the proportions of theoretical and empirical work. We then specifically turn to the scholarship on ableism that has a focus on education and map different strands of research on ableism in the fields of education.

We conducted a scoping review following the PRISMAScR guidelines (Tricco et al., 2018) and searching “ableis*” in the title or keywords of texts in three large scientific databases: Scopus, EBSCO host and BASE, which is located in Germany and provides increased access to scholarship in German language. Due to our situatedness in a German-speaking context we decided to particularly include a German database. While we did not limit the beginning of the period for time of publication in our search strategy (but we put 2023 as the end point), we did limit publication to books, book chapters and journal articles. We did not limit languages or countries of origin of the research. Through our search strategy, we initially found 4.221 publications. After removal of duplicates and irrelevant text types (e.g. conference proceedings or book reviews) 1.613 publications reaching from 1985 to 2023 remained. We documented these publications manually in more detail and then categorised them based on their title and abstract into a) empirical (yes/no) b) thematic focus (e.g. education) and c) thematic subcategory (e.g. school). This categorisation procedure was a result of several pilot runs conducted separately by the two authors, then synchronising and readjusting. After our pilot phase, both authors categorised the 1.613 publications separately. After that, we reviewed our categories and discussed discrepancies. For the purpose of this paper, we clustered our findings to give an overview of the areas of focus/fields of study (= thematic focus) in our scoping review sample, the proportions of theoretical and empirical work with regard to specific fields, and we introduce our emerging findings regarding different aspects within ableism in education research (= subcategories within the thematic focus of education).

Ableism is an innovative concept that is gainful for theorising oppression and hierarchies of power, which are legitimised by ability expectations. Indeed, the concept has received particular attention within the field of education, mostly with a focus on schools and formal education (More & Buchner, in press). However, as we argue, ableist structures are also highly relevant to other fields of education, such as informal educational settings throughout the life course (e.g. within families) as well as non-formal settings such as educational leisure activities. Besides exposing ableism in different subfields of education, education research scholars have also begun to express ways in which a less ableist or ableism-critical pedagogy may be implemented. However, again these ideas are almost exclusively focused on the school context and would benefit from a broader approach, taking into account the many different, formal, non-formal and informal fields of education.

Campbell, F. K. (2019). Precision ableism: A studies in ableism approach to developing histories of disability and abledment. Rethinking History 23(2), 138-156. Chouinard, V. (1997). Making Space for Disabling Differences: Challenging Ableist Geographies. Enviroment and Planning D: Society and Space, 15(4), 379–390. More, R. & Buchner, T. (in press). Perspektiven einer ableismkritischen Sozialpädagogik. Neue Praxis. Tricco, A. C., Lillie, E., et al. (2018). PRISMA extension for scoping reviews (PRISMAScR): Checklist and explanation. Annals of Internal Medicine, 169(7), 467-473. Wolbring, G. (2008). The politics of ableism. Development, 51, 252-258.