About

Taucia González is an associate professor of special education at the University of Arizona, with a Ph.D. from Arizona State University. Her research focuses on issues of equity and inclusion for emergent bilinguals with and without learning disabilities, examining how bilingual youth from Latina/o/x and Hmong communities use testimonios to articulate their experiences with educational inequities. Her scholarship aims to better understand how pedagogies, practices, and policies can recognize, integrate, and sustain the cultures and voices of emergent bilinguals with and without disabilities. Dr. González's work bridges general and special education and has been featured in prominent journals such as the Journal of Multilingual Research and the Educational Review. She serves as an associate editor for Exceptional Children, advises the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center, and participates on editorial boards for Review of Educational Research and Multiple Voices - Disability, Race, and Language Intersections in Special Education. Recognized for her contributions, she has received awards including the 2023 Early Career Award from the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse, the 2022 Early Career Scholar Award from the American Educational Research Association’s Latina/o/x Research Issues SIG, and the Educational Review’s Article of the Year Award for 2020 publications. With over 20 years of experience working in and with Latina/o/x communities as an educator and researcher, Dr. González teaches undergraduate and graduate courses aimed at preparing future practitioners and researchers to create more inclusive educational systems across intersecting markers of difference.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Social Science
• Political Science
• Pedagogy
• Epistemology
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Systemic change for inclusive education: an intersectional framework for global equity

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2026-02-17

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• “We want to help our community”: fostering youth civic agency in a third space

  International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education · 2025-01-26 · 5 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Re-imagining Social Futures: Bi/Multilingual Youths’ Sociocritical Literacies

  Journal of Literacy Research · 2025-07-03 · 1 citations

  article

  This paper focuses on a summer writing program we called GANAS with bi/multilingual youth, including English learners and one youth with a learning disability, that sought to facilitate sociocritical literacies (SL) based on youths’ lived experiences to imagine new social futures. Envisioned as a social design experiment, we used testimonio as a primary mediational tool to promote SL, with the goals of advancing: (1) an equity-driven learning ecology, (2) students’ sensemaking and critical thinking, and (3) social change. Using qualitative methods, we collected and analyzed multiple data sources, including youths’ testimonios. Our findings include an illustrative case of a Latino youth that illustrates how the testimonio process facilitated SL, and youths’ engagement in SL through their critical reflections on racism, colorism, linguicism, and their experiences as source for knowledge. We conclude with implications for literacy practitioners and researchers committed to transformative literacies for minoritized youth.

  PublisherDOI

• Towards the full potential of <i>Lau</i> : Interrogating the intersectional nuances of language, disability, &amp; race

  Bilingual Research Journal · 2024-10-01 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Reflexive Quality Criteria: Questions and Indicators for Purpose-Driven Special Education Qualitative Research

  Exceptional Children · 2023 · 60 citations

  • Sociology
  • Psychology
  • Political Science

  Qualitative research (QR) has gained visibility and acceptance in the field of special education due to early efforts to identify quality indicators focused on technical and methodological aspects of QR. Whereas these indicators focused on credibility and trustworthiness of data, this article articulates additional QR quality indicators to enhance the value and power of researcher reflexivity as a means to expand the capacity of purpose- and equity-driven special education research. First, the need for reflexivity criteria is addressed. Next, reflexivity criteria are operationalized in key questions that engage researchers in self-reflection: (a) Why do QR? (b) By whom, for whom, and with whom is QR being conducted? and (c) Who is affected by the benefits and costs of QR? These questions encourage researchers to grapple with the complexity of experiences, outcomes, and structures associated with special education and ultimately advance more equitable policy and practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Centering Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Special Education Preparation

  2023-12-07 · 3 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Special educators are tasked with meeting the individualized needs of students with disabilities; yet, inequities persist for Black, Indigenous, and Students of Color (BISOC) with disabilities. Special educators trained with culturally responsive and sustaining practices may be able to disrupt many of these inequities by building on cultural differences as strengths and assets. Teacher preparation programs play important roles in supporting special educators to develop culturally responsive/sustaining understandings and practices; yet, literature shows insufficient documentation of how special education, as a field, is supporting pre- and in-service special educators to develop these competencies. Though more empirical work is needed to establish culturally relevant/sustaining practices in special education teacher preparation, there are some promising practices that can be built on for pre- and in-service special educators as well as in doctoral programs.

  PublisherDOI

• Arizona and California Special Education Teachers on Their Readiness to Work With Dual Language Learners: Re-Centering Social Justice in Special Education

  Digital Scholarship - UNLV (University of Nevada Reno) · 2021-01-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Wrestling with the Paradoxes of Equity: A Cultural-Historical Reframing of Technical Assistance Interventions

  Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners · 2020-03-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Equity assistance centers (EACs) have played key roles in fulfilling the legacy of the Civil Rights Act by providing technical assistance (TA) to districts and schools in addressing discriminatory behaviors on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion for over 50 years. In 2002, the National Center for Culturally Responsive Education Systems (NCCRESt) was federally funded as an EAC offering a new model of TA. In a mere seven years, the NCCRESt played a pivotal role in shifting the discourse and efforts to address disproportionality. In this article, we provide an historical contextualization of policies and research that converged to shape the NCCRESt’s TA, reframing and producing new forms of critical evidence on the racialization of disability and the required responses to tackle this long-standing equity problem. We close with reflections on the promises and possibilities of building on the NCCRESt’s disproportionality legacy.

  PublisherDOI

• Accounting for the Intersectional Complexity of Disability and Race in Critical Youth Studies/Youth Participatory Action Research Data Collection Methods

  2020-04-23 · 5 citations

  book-chapter

  This chapter examines how and to what extent Critical Youth Studies (CYS) and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) data collection methods have accounted for the troubling entanglement of racism and ableism that manifest in schools and society. We review influential volumes and individual examples of CYS, including YPAR, asking “Who counts?” given the role of research-related violence, sterilization, and institutionalization of youth with disabilities throughout history, and who are disproportionately youth of color. We find several promising data collection methods; however, the number of CYS/YPAR studies attending to disability at the intersection of race are relatively few, and of those that do attend to these connections, most interpret disability only as something “being done to” students rather than simultaneously consider disability as an important social location and affiliation. Drawing from reviewed studies, we close with practical considerations for CYS/YPAR data collection methods with youth at the intersection of race and disability.

  PublisherDOI

• Culture and Biology in Learning Disabilities Research

  2020-05-01 · 7 citations

  book-chapter

  The chapter provides a critical overview of research on learning disabilities (LD) with an eye on the intersections of biology and culture and offer reflections for interdisciplinary research. The LD is also considered a secondary condition—i.e., comorbid to other developmental disorders (e.g., attention deficit disorder, emotional disorders). The LD represented a less stigmatizing category than intellectual disabilities, which had been historically associated with poverty and minoritized groups, particularly African Americans. Traditional reading instruction for students with LDs tends to frame learning as individual learners’ performance in discrete literacy tasks such as early reading skills (e.g., decoding). However, LD research has also been conducted on reading comprehension, mathematics and writing. The insights from this review open crucial opportunities to reframe very nature of LD from bio-cultural perspective. The multifaceted portraits of LD students that emerge from this standpoint compel researchers to produce situated representations of these learners, with close attention to contingencies of context and local goals.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Alfredo J. Artiles

  Stanford University

  10 shared

• David J. Connor

  4 shared

• Saili S. Kulkarni

  4 shared

• Elizabeth B. Kozleski

  Stanford University

  3 shared

• Sarah M. Salinas

  3 shared

• Melanie Bertrand

  University of Arizona

  3 shared

• Adai Tefera

  University of Arizona

  3 shared

• Wendy Cavendish

  University of Miami

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• 2023 Early Career Award from the Council for Exceptional Chi…
• 2022 Early Career Scholar Award from the American Educationa…
• Educational Review’s Article of the Year Award for articles…
• Outstanding Woman of Color by the University of Wisconsin (2…
• Esperanza award by Chicanos por la Causa