Casey Woodfield earned her Ph.D. in Inclusive Special Education Program in the Department of Teaching and Leadership at Syracuse University. She also holds a master’s degree in Cultural Foundations of Education and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Disability Studies from Syracuse University. Her dissertation research chronicled the high school experiences of five students with autism who type to communicate and examines the intersections of educational practice, communicative diversity, and student identity. At Syracuse, Woodfield co-taught courses in Inclusive Special Education and Disability Studies, including Significant Disabilities: Shifts in Paradigms and Practices and Narrating Competence: Exploring the Discourse of Autism. She also worked on the research team at the Institute on Communication and Inclusion, where she collaborated on projects related to communication support relationships, developing independence in typing, lexical patterns of text produced by individuals with autism, use of iPad apps as training tools for communication access, and school and community inclusion of individuals who type to communicate.

Casey Woodfield’s academic, professional, and personal interests are grounded in commitments to inclusion and communication as interrelated imperatives. Her research focuses on development and training of dynamic communication supports, inclusive educational practice, and the lived experiences of individuals with disabilities, particularly autism, who use augmentative and alternative communication. In addition to establishing reliable and sustainable support systems for communication and inclusion, her work aims to counter the socially constructed notions of competence and voice by privileging the perspectives of individuals with disabilities as critical agents of advocacy and change.

Ashby, C., Woodfield, C. & Delia, Q. (in press). Communication is the root of necessity:  Constructing communicative competence. In C. Ashby & M. Cosier (Eds.), Enacting change from within: Disability studies meets teaching and teacher education. New York, NY: Peter Lang

Ashby, C. & Woodfield, C. (in press). Communication under fire: Defending communication rights for all. TASH Connections.

Ashby, C., Jung, E., Woodfield, C., Vroman, K. & Orsati, F. (2015). “Wishing to go it alone”:     the complicated interplay of independence, interdependence and agency. Disability and Society, 30(10), 1474–1489.

Woodfield, C. & Ashby, C. (2015). “The right path of equality”: Supporting high school   students with autism who type to communicate. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 1-20.

Woodfield, C., Jung, E. & Ashby, C. (2014). “Hoping for Greatness”: Exploring the notion of      “novicity” in communication support partnerships. Research and Practice for Persons     with Severe Disabilities, 39(4), 274-289.

Theoharis, G., Causton, J. & Woodfield, C. (2015). Leading inclusive schools for students with   disabilities. In G. Theoharis & M. Scanlan, (Eds.) Inclusive leadership for increasingly diverse schools, (pp. 13-38). New York, NY: Routledge.