 Subjects -> DISABILITY (Total: 100 journals)
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- Access to Inclusive Education for Students with Autism: An Analysis of
Canada’s Compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities
Authors: Phil Lord
Abstract: This article argues that Canada fails to meet its obligation under article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to provide students with autism with access to inclusive education. Moving beyond Canadian legislation, under which every province and territory recognises the right of all students to an inclusive education, it analyses Canada’s education system and the implementation of the goal of inclusive education. It points out the effect of five interrelated factors on the inclusiveness of the Canadian education system and its accessibility for students with autism: reductions in funding for education; the inadequacy of individual support measures and parent participation; the lack of education and training for teachers; the use of language indicative of the medical model of disability by governments; and "voluntary segregation" – the voluntary removal of children from the public education system by their parents. It concludes that Canada likely does not meet its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 12:54:24 -050
- Falsified Incompetence and Other Lies the Positivists Told Me
Authors: Rua M. Williams
Abstract: Facilitated Communication (FC) is a technique of supported communication for non- speaking people with motor movements commonly understood as spasmodic, dyspraxic, or otherwise unruly. FC is a contentious site of scientific conflict where highly circumscribed quantitative experiments have been unable to reckon with the lived reality of typers. The debate over the efficacy of FC centers around broader arguments of what counts as scientific rigor and validity. In this paper, I remind readers that experiential data is, in fact, empirical. Qualitative analysis is scientifically rigorous. Adopting technologies of analysis from Chela Sandoval’s “Methodology of the Oppressed,” I explore a rhetorics of evacuation deployed by skeptics that result in the erasure of FC user agency, testimony, and experience. I invite readers to explore how these rhetorics extend beyond FC and into the wider field of education research.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Need for Prominent Core Curricula Designed and Taught by Persons with
Disabilities in All Levels of Medical Education
Authors: Meera Joseph; Jeff Nisker
Abstract: The need for comprehensive core curricula in medical education regarding the health of persons with disabilities has been identified by disability scholars for many years and was recently reinforced by our research indicating Canadian physicians lack knowledge of the social model of disability, and their legal duty to ensure accommodation for persons with disabilities to have equal access to health. The purpose of the current research is to investigate the existence of core medical education curricula devoted to the health of persons with disabilities and determine whether persons with disabilities were involved as curricular designers and educators. A comprehensive literature search of all academic sites found few papers reporting on such curricula, and the time devoted to these curricula was small. Only one medical school internationally was found to have persons with disabilities playing a major role as curricular designers. Further problematic was that “disability” tended to be portrayed by non-disabled professional actors hired as standardized patients (SPs), and only occasionally by actors with disabilities but in scripted SP roles distant from their lived experience. We contend that if persons with disabilities designed medical curricula, non-disabled SPs would be replaced by persons with disabilities as medical educators, sharing their own lived experiences. Another alternative in replacing professional able-bodied actor SPs is the novel education method of digital storytelling, with disabled persons sharing their lived experiences. Another immediate opportunity exists in Canada in the newly developing competency-based curricula for prominent core competencies to be designed and taught by persons with disabilities.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- “Effective Schooling” in the Age of Capital: Critical Insights from
Advocacy Anthropology, Anthropology of Education, and Critical Disability
Studies
Authors: Sara M. Acevedo Espinal
Abstract: This paper argues that the ideological and material reproduction of “effective schooling” in the Age of Capital functions to normalize and perpetuate the unequal social relations and oppressive dynamics that characterize free market economies and their accompanying political and cultural practices in the historical and educational context of the United States of America. I argue that the intersection of three perspectives furthers the work of scholars grounded in the various disciplines—advocacy anthropology, the anthropology of education, and the mutual engagement of anthropology and critical disability studies—and demonstrates that a multi-inter- transdisciplinary lens is essential for deepening an understanding of the discourses as well as the concrete practices that push ‘disorderly’ student subjects into precarious circumstances that threaten their physical, emotional, and psychological integrity.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- An International Conversation on Disabled Children’s Childhoods:
Theory, Ethics and Methods
Authors: Kathryn Underwood; Marisol Moreno Angarita, Tillie Curran, Katherine Runswick-Cole, Donald Wertlieb
Abstract: This article brings together members of the International Advisory Committee for the Inclusive Early Childhood Service System (IECSS) project, a longitudinal study of interactions with institutional processes when families have a young child with disabilities. The article introduces international discourses on early childhood development (both individual and community) and raises questions about the ethics of these discourses in the context of historical and current global inequalities. We consider the exporting of professional discourses from the global north to the global south through directives from global institutions, and the imposition of medical thinking onto the lives of disabled children. We discuss theoretical positions and research methods that we believe may open up possibilities for change.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Naming and Claiming: The Tension Between Institutional and
Self-Identification of Disability
Authors: Gillian Parekh; Robert S. Brown
Abstract: The relationship between the social construction and self-identification of disability is complex and has been integral to the work of critical disability scholars (Ben-Moshe, Chapman & Carey, 2014; Davis, 2013; Erevelles, 2011; Yergeau, 2018). In 2006-07 and 2016-17, the Toronto District School Board conducted a student census and asked students to identify whether they had a disability that was assessed by either their doctor or school. Interestingly, the proportion of students who self-identified as having a disability was only a fraction of those who had been institutionally identified (formally and informally) through special education. Additionally, among students within special education, distinct trends emerged around who was likely to self- identify across class, income, gender and racial categories.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Cultivating Disability Leadership: Implementing a Methodology of Access to
Transform Community-based Learning
Authors: Fady Shanouda; Michelle Duncanson, Alanna Smyth, Mah-E-Leqa Jadgal, Maureen O'Neill, Karen K. Yoshida
Abstract: In this paper, we describe a methodology of access developed and applied during a three-year project in the Niagara region focused on cultivating the next generation of disability leaders. We describe the theoretical approach to the project and highlight the significance of doing this work in Niagara. A literature review of adult, transformative, and community-based learning scholarship revealed that little research or writing has focused on describing a thorough approach to access in transformative projects in community-based settings. Writing with two participants from the study, we elaborate on the five dimensions of our approach: 1) funding; 2) local and focused; 3) intimate, relational, and interdependent; 4) curating access, and 5) welcoming disruption. We also describe the tensions in taking on this work. We conclude with an invitation to scholars, community groups, and organizations to consider integrating our methodology in their next research project.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Self-Advocacy as Precariousness in University Education
Authors: Cynthia Bruce
Abstract: Self-advocacy has arguably become one of the most centrally positioned priorities in Canadian post-secondary disability service-provision frameworks. It is widely understood to be an indispensable skill for disabled students working to implement academic accommodations at university, and it has become the focus of numerous efforts to prepare them for transition from high school settings. This article draws on findings from a doctoral study that explored the self- advocacy experiences of disabled students and their professors in three small liberal arts universities in Nova Scotia, Canada in order to theorize self-advocacy as precariousness. Detailed research findings are reported elsewhere, but this account offers a theoretical analysis of participant experiences in order to broaden understandings of self-advocacy as a relational access requirement that generates persistent uncertainty for disabled learners.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Integrating Crip Theory and Disability Justice into Feminist Anti-Violence
Education
Authors: Samuel Z. Shelton
Abstract: In this paper, I critically reflect on my efforts to and experiences of integrating disability justice and crip theory into my intersectional, queer, feminist pedagogy. I begin by grounding my pedagogical practice in my experiences as an anti-violence advocate / activist in order to argue that disability theory and justice have the potential to not only expand anti-violence education, but also to transform it through careful attention to access, care, and interdependence. In this article, access refers to the possibilities of being fully present and supported within a given learning space; care describes the process of creating access through actions that make presence possible; and interdependence recognizes that access and care must co-exist because people need each other. I then identify parallels between anti-violence work and theories and movements against ableism because I have found this intersection to be pedagogically generative. Next, I describe what disability theory and justice, access, and crip politics (McRuer, 2006; Price, 2015) look like within the context of anti-violence education. In the second section of this paper, I write about how disability theory and justice brought to bear on anti-violence education can help to promote radical imagination and hope as well as deeper understandings of foundational concepts like consent. I also critically examine how anti-violence education can expand the possibilities of disability pedagogy through meaningful engagements with intersectional feminist theory and praxis. My purpose in developing these claims is to demonstrate the ongoing importance of bridging disability theory and justice with intersectional feminist practices of education.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Teaching and the Experience of Disability: The Pedagogy of Ed Roberts
Authors: Scot Danforth
Abstract: Ed Roberts was a renowned activist considered to be one of the founding leaders of the American disability rights movement. Although he engaged in numerous political strategies, his main form of activism was teaching in his prolific public speaking career across the United States and around the world. The content and methods of his pedagogy were crafted from his own personal experiences as a disabled man. His teaching featured autobiographic selections from his own life in which he fought and defeated forces of oppression and discrimination. This article examines Roberts’ disability rights teaching in relation to the experiential sources, political content, and teaching techniques.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Neuroqueer(ing) Noise: Beyond ‘Mere Inclusion’ in a Neurodiverse Early
Childhood Classroom
Authors: David Ben Shannon
Abstract: Inclusion, as it is understood in a British education context, usually refers to the integration of children with dis/abilities into a mainstream school. However, rather than transform the school, inclusion often seeks to rehabilitate—to tune-up—the ‘divergent’ child’s noisy tendencies, making them more easily included. Music and the arts more broadly have long been instrumentalized as one way of achieving this transformation, relying on the assumption that there is something already inherently opposed to music—out-of-tune, or noisy—about that child. In this article, I think and compose with Neuroqueer(ing) Noise, a music research-creation project conducted in an early childhood classroom. I draw from affect and neuroqueer theories to consider how the instrumentalization of music as a way to include autistic children relies on the assumption that ‘they’ are already inherently unmusical. I consider how a deliberate attention to noise might help in unsettling ‘mere inclusion’: in effect, changing the mode we think-with in education, and opening us—researchers and educators—to momentarily say “No!” to ‘mere inclusion’. This article is of relevance to teachers working in early childhood classrooms, as well as to educational researchers interested in affect theories, crip-queer and neuroqueer theories, and neurodiversity, as well as sound- or arts-based research methods.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Rebooting Inclusive Education' New Technologies and Disabled People
Authors: Dan Goodley; David Cameron, Kirsty Liddiard, Becky Parry, Katherine Runswick-Cole, Ben Whitburn, Meng Ee Wong
Abstract: This paper provides a speculative, conceptual and literature-based review of the relationship between disability and new technologies with a specific focus on inclusive education for disabled people. The first section critically explores disability and new technologies in a time of Industry 4.0. We lay out some concerns that we have, especially in relation to disabled people’s peripheral positionality, when it comes to these new developments. The second section focuses on the area of inclusive education. Inclusion and education are oftentimes in conflict with one another. We tease out these conflicts and argue that we cannot decouple the promise of new technologies from the challenges of inclusive education, because, in spite of the potential for technological mediation to broaden access to education, there remains deep-rooted problems with exclusion. The third section of our paper explores affirmative possibilities in relation to the interactions between disability and new technologies. We draw on the theoretical fields of Science and Technology Studies; Critical Disability Studies; Assistive and Inclusive Technologies; Collaborative Robotics, Maker and DIY Cultures and identify a number of key considerations that relate directly to the revaluing of inclusive education. We conclude our paper by identifying what we view as pressing and immediate concerns for inclusive educators when considering the merging of disability and technology, accessibility and learning design.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Review of Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to
Robinson Crusoe, Julia Miele Rodas (2018)
Authors: Rua M. Williams
Abstract: Julia Miele Rodas offers Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe as a tome of resistant literary praxis. So that we might allow ‘disordered’ to claim poetic voice- that we might recognize the celebration of this voice in our culturally treasured texts, and rather than require retroactive diagnosis, we simply allow these voices to be recognized as worthy- and Autistic. At last, a text which explores autistic language: allowing for its ironies without claiming it to be paradoxical; giving shape to its cultural consistencies without constraining it to a pathologized rigidity; allowing for both meaning where a reader might suspect none and none where a reader might insist on inserting one; and all while refusing to stigmatize, pathologize, medicalize, problematize, or even to diagnose.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Review of DisCrit: Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in
Education by David J. Connor, Beth A. Ferri & Subini A. Annamma, Eds.
(2016)
Authors: David Jaulus
Abstract: DisCrit places scholars from the field of Disability Studies (DS) in conversation with those from Critical Race Theory (CRT). Specifically, dis/ability is put into conversation with class- and race-based analyses to formulate an intersectional framework1. The concept of intersectionality has taken on heightened importance within Disability Studies in recent years. While Discrit is primarily intended for scholars and aspiring academics, the text also directly speaks to people like me, who identify as dis/abled.
PubDate: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Introduction: Disability Studies in Education—Critical Conversations
Authors: Patty Douglas; Alan Santinele Martino
Abstract: This special issue of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies brings together 19 articles by scholars and activists across broad academic disciplines and activist communities— from disability studies to inclusive education, early childhood education, decolonial studies, feminist anti-violence organizing, community health and more—as well as geopolitical locations.
PubDate: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- “I don’t like to be told that I view a student with a deficit
mindset”: Why it Matters that Disability Studies in Education Continues
to Grow
Authors: David J. Connor
Abstract: In this article I use personal narrative to provide a commentary on the value of Disability Studies in Education (DSE). Through a mixture of recollections, observations, and descriptions, along with engagement with scholarship in the fields of both special education and DSE, I highlight ways in which I and other scholars have utilized the latter in our daily professional practices. First, I describe the point in my educational career when I came into contact with Disability Studies (DS). Second, I share the beginnings of how DSE came into existence through the work of a coalition of critical special educators. Third, I provide instances of DSE in action, highlighting a recent in-service presentation and other examples. Fourth, I explain why DSE is needed to protect and develop conceptualizations of disability outside of the traditional special education realm. Fifth, I illustrate the benefits of DSE’s interdisciplinary nature. Finally, I assert that DSE provides a visionary lens for improving educational practices for students with disabilities. In closing, I advocate for DSE’s continued growth in helping change deficit-based understandings of disability that continue to pervade education and society.
PubDate: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Toward Inclusive Education' Focusing a Critical Lens on Universal
Design for Learning
Authors: Susan Baglieri
Abstract: Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an orientation that aims to bring multiplicity to teaching and learning in ways that respond to the diversity of learners. This article is a call to those working within disability studies to engage more deeply in UDL research. An examination of the conceptual development and research on UDL as presented in academic literature is provided to consider how it connects and disconnects with disability studies and might be used and misused in inclusive education.
PubDate: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Archival Artistry: Exploring Disability Aesthetics in Late Twentieth
Century Higher Education
Authors: Lauren Beard
Abstract: Jay Dolmage’s (2014) Disability Rhetoric encourages scholars to search beyond normative Aristolean bounds of rhetoric and embrace a critical lens of rhetorical activity as embodied, and disability as an inalienable aspect of said embodiment (p. 289). To that end, this project posits an innovative structure for rhetorically (re)analyzing disability history in higher education through a framework of disability aesthetics. In Academic Ableism, Jay Dolmage (2017) argues that an institution’s aesthetic ideologies and architecture denote a rhetorical agenda of ableism. In Disability Aesthetics, Tobin Siebers (2010) asserts disability is a vital aspect of aesthetic interpretation. Both works determine that disability has always held a crucial, critical role in the production and consumption of aestheticism, as it invites able-bodied individuals to consider the dynamic, nonnormative instantiations of the human body as a social, civic issue (p. 2). Disability, therefore, has the power to reinvigorate the sociorhetorical impact of both aesthetic representation and the human experience writ large. With this framework in mind, this project arranges an archival historiography of disability history in higher education in the late twentieth century at a mid-sized U.S. state institution. During this time, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act was finally signed into law, and universities confronted a legal demand to allow all students access. Ultimately, this project seeks to demonstrate how disability scholars and historiographers can widen the view of both disability history and disability rhetoric in higher education through a focus on student aesthetic performance and intervention.
PubDate: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- The Myth of Independence as Better: Transforming Curriculum Through
Disability Studies and Decoloniality
Authors: Maria Karmiris
Abstract: By situating this article within disability studies, decolonial studies and postcolonial studies, my purpose is to explore orientations towards independence within public school practices and show how this serves to reinforce hierarchies of exclusion. As feminist, queer and postcolonial scholar Ahmed (2006, p. 3) contends, “Orientations shape not only how we inhabit, but how we apprehend this world of shared inhabitance as well as ‘who’ or ‘what’ we direct our energy toward” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 3). I wonder how the policies and practices that I am oriented towards as a public school teacher limit the possibilities of encountering teaching and learning as a mode of reckoning and apprehending “this world of shared inhabitance'” I also wonder how remaining oriented towards independence as the goal of learning simultaneously sustains an adherence to colonial western logics under the current neoliberal ethos. Through Ahmed’s provocation I explore how the gaze of both teachers and students in public schools remains oriented towards independent learning in a manner that sustains conditions of exclusion, marginalization and oppression.
PubDate: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Interrogating Sanctioned Violence: A Survey of Parents/Guardians of
Children with Disabilities about Restraint and Seclusion in Manitoba’s
Schools
Authors: Nadine Bartlett; Taylor F. Ellis
Abstract: There is increasing concern that restraint and seclusion are being misused in schools, most often with students with disabilities. This issue is silent at the provincial level in Manitoba, with no regulation from the Ministry of Education. In order to examine the extent to which restraint and seclusion were being used in schools in Manitoba with children/youth with disabilities, an anonymous online survey involving a convenience sample of parents/guardians of children/ youth with disabilities was conducted. The 48-item questionnaire was disseminated through disability advocacy organizations in this province. Parents/guardians reported a high frequency of the use of restraint and seclusion, limited consent to the use of these practices, and an absence of written notification that they had occurred. Of great concern, some parents reported that their child was subjected to mechanical restraint and practices known to have a higher risk of causing death (e.g. supine and prone holds, being left in rooms that were locked from the outside etc.). A majority of parents reported their child had suffered trauma, and signs of physical injury also were noted. The results of this study indicate that restraint and seclusion are being misused as behaviour management techniques, especially with students with disabilities. These practices contravene Canada’s commitment to international standards regarding the rights of children and youth with disabilities, and change is required. The implementation of regulatory standards, legitimizing the voice of parents of children and youth with disabilities, and training for educators in positive behaviour interventions and supports are proposed.
PubDate: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- Semiotic Stalemate: Resisting Restraint and Seclusion through Guattari’s
Micropolitics of Desire
Authors: Robin Roscigno
Abstract: This article explores the semiotic relationships between Applied Behavior Analysis research, special education practice and restraint and seclusion policy by tracing the evolution of the concept of “self-restraint,” —a term from Behavior Analytic literature for a variety of “behaviors” in which a person restricts their own movement. I trace how “self-restraint” emerges as a new class of behaviors eligible for intervention, and how this marks certain bodies for restrictive practices such as restraint, seclusion and the use of aversives. I explore how rhetorical moves shape the educational landscape of disabled students and expose mechanisms of control that are shaped by scholarship. By using “self-restraint” as an example, I respond to the taxonomies of deficit disseminated through Applied Behavioral Analysis in schooling for neurodivergent students and make critical links between special education practice and Disability Studies in Education.
PubDate: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
- The Social and Epistemological Violence of Inclusive Education for Deaf
Learners
Authors: Kristin Snoddon
Abstract: This paper begins by describing several recent human rights complaints brought by Canadian parents of deaf children who have not been able to access an education in sign language in provinces where a deaf school has been closed. The paper outlines some ways in which so-called inclusive educational systems perpetuate social and epistemological violence by depriving deaf children of direct instruction in sign language and access to a community of signing deaf peers. Inclusive educational systems have disrupted intergenerational sign language transmission and resulted in deaf children’s loss of identity. The paper calls for sign language policies and sign language-medium educational practices to ensure the viability of deaf futures.
PubDate: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -050
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