Federico R. Waitoller, PhD
Professor
Special Education
Pronouns: He/him/his
Contact
Building & Room:
3545 ETMSW
Address:
1040 W. Harrison St. (MC 147), Chicago, IL 60607
Email:
CV Link:
About
Federico Waitoller is a professor at the Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois Chicago. His research agenda focuses on inclusive education and has two strands. First, Dr. Waitoller's work examines the access, experiences, and educational outcomes of students with disabilities in school choice programs (e.g., charter schools and educational vouchers). Second, his work studies how to improve teacher learning and pedagogies for inclusive education. He approaches these strands from an international perspective. He is also the host and producer of DiveIn: A podcast about Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Special Education
Selected Grants
Spencer Foundation, Parents of Students with Disabilities in School Choice Programs in the Basque Country., Principal Investigator
Spencer Foundation, Leveling the Landscape through School Choice? Urban Parents of Students with Disabilities Charting the Education Marketplace, Principal Investigator
Selected Publications
Waitoller, F. R. (2020). Excluded by choice: Urban Students with Disabilities in the Education Marketplace. Teachers College Press.
Waitoller, F. R., & Thorius, K.K. (Eds.). (2023). Sustaining disabled youth: Centering Disability in Asset Pedagogies. Teachers College Press. Choice Outstanding Academic Titles, 2024; Top 75 Community College Titles, 2024.
Waitoller, F. R., & Lubienski, C. (2024). School choice strategies at the intersection of disability, race, class, and geography. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 32(26). https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.32.8273
Weber, R. N., & Waitoller, F. R., & Drucker J. M. (2022). Disposable spaces: How special education enrollment affects classroom utilization and school closures. Urban Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859221126700
Waitoller, F. R., Woodard, R., Rao, A., Kang, V. (2021). Untangling ideologies of disablement: The perils of the (in)visibility of dis/ability in urban teacher education programs. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 1-21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1956630
Waitoller, F. R., & Maggin, D. (2020). Can charter schools address racial inequities evidenced in placement patterns in the least restrictive environment? A Longitudinal Study in Chicago Public Schools. Remedial and Special Education, 3, 127-138. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741932518800392
Waitoller, F. R., & Lubienski, C. (2019). Disability, race, and the geography of school choice: Towards an intersectional analytical framework. AERA Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858418822505.
Waitoller, F. R., Nguyen, N., *Super, G. (2019). The irony of rigor: ‘No excuses’ charter schools at the intersections of race and disability. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 32, 282-298.
Waitoller, F. R., & Thorius, K. K. (2016). Cross-Pollinating Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy with Universal Design for Learning: Toward an inclusive pedagogy that accounts for student dis/ability. Harvard Educational Review,86(3), 366-389.
Artiles, A. J., Kozleski, E. B., & Waitoller, F. R. (Eds.). (2011). Inclusive education: Examining equity in five continents. Harvard Education Press.
Service to Community
Through engaged scholarship, Dr. Waitoller has collaborated with and presented research findings to various stakeholders in the Chicago area, including parent and neighborhood organizations, legal advocate groups for students with disabilities, Chicago Teacher Union, and school district administrators. He also testified in public hearings before local and national politicians.
Notable Honors
2024, Choice Outstanding Academic Titles, 2024, Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association
2023, Distinguished Researcher Award 2023, American Educational Research Association (AERA) Special and Inclusive Education Research Special Interest Group
2022, Society of Professors of Education Oustanding Book Award, Society of Professors of Education
2020, Fulbright Fellowship, The Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
2019, Researcher of the Year 2018, Rising Star in Social Sciences Award., The University of Illinois at Chicago.
Education
2011- PhD, Arizona State University, Tempe, Special Education
2007- MEd, University of Washington, Seattle, Special Education
2003- BA, Columbia College, Psychology
Professional Memberships
Council for Exceptional Children
American Educational Research Association
Selected Presentations
Waitoller, F. R. (2024, May). Hacia una agenda de investigacion para una educacion inclusiva interseccional. Encuentro del Grupo Latinoamericano de Educación Inclusiva. Manizales, Colombia.
Waitoller, F. R. (2024, March). Speaking of cages and learning without barriers: UDL and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies. Congreso de Educación Inclusiva. San Sebastian, Basque Country.
Waitoller, F. R. (2024, September). Eugenics' Manifold Influences on Special Needs Assessment Procedures - Historical Analysis and Comparison of Germany, Italy, the USA, and Ecuador (ca. 1930-1960). Annual meeting of the British Educational Research Association, Manchester, UK.
Waitoller, F. R. (2023, April). Searching Schools at the Intersection of Disability and Race. Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.
Waitoller F. R. (2023, December). Towards an intersectional disability justice framework in inclusive education. Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Waitoller F. R. (2023, November) Equity issues for students with disabilities in school choice programs. Annual Meeting of the American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association, Boston.
Waitoller, F. R. (2022, December). School choice, educational segregation, and students with disabilities. European Cities Against School Segregation Conference. Barcelona, Spain
Research Currently in Progress
With a grant from the Spencer Foundation, Dr. Waitoller is researching how parents of students with disabilities' perceptions of urban social landscapes shape their ability to engage the school choice market in the city of Bilbao, Spain. Using a longitudinal, mixed-methods approach that merges geographical analysis and in-depth interviews, the research team will answer three questions: (a) What factors are considered and are persuasive for PSWD as they construct choice sets in urban settings? (c) How are PSWD’s perceptions of such factors influenced by their physical or social location? (d) How are choice sets distributed in and across urban spaces?