How Teaching Shapes Our Thinking About Disabilities: Stories from the Field

This book connects practice to research and vice versa through the use of personal stories. Twenty contributors share tales of teaching students with dis/abilities in K-12 settings, highlighting the dissonance between academic knowledge and experiential knowledge. They critique deficit-models of disability and advocate for a shift towards critical special education and disability studies. These experiences ground the authors as teachers and teacher educators who study issues of access and equality and develop new theoretical models to impact practices and policies.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 330 pages
\n Publication date: 26 April 2021
\n Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing Inc
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This book seamlessly weaves together practice and research, fostering a reciprocal relationship through the use of deeply personal autoethnographic memoirs. Within this compilation, twenty contributors offer a selection of captivating tales from their experiences teaching students with disabilities in K-12 settings across the United States. These narratives encompass both tentative triumphs and frustrating failures, as well as a profound yearning to comprehend the intricacies of teaching and learning. The authors also candidly share an early realization of a significant discrepancy between the academic knowledge imparted to them during their teacher education programs and their firsthand experiences in schools. This discrepancy prompted them to critically examine established practices within the field of special education, specifically in relation to the children they taught. As their inquiries deepened, each author grew increasingly skeptical of deficit-models of disability that perpetuated commonplace practices of physical and social exclusion, dysfunction, and disorders. They further critiqued the reliance on repetitive remediation and punitive punishments as means of addressing these challenges.

The authors vividly describe how their interactions with children, youth, parents, and administrators within the confines of their classrooms and schools exerted a profound influence on their professional growth. These encounters sparked a transformative shift away from the limiting discourse of special education and toward the development of critical special educators and active engagement with disability studies. Through their experiences, the authors sought to reclaim, reimagine, and redefine disability as an integral and natural aspect of human diversity. Furthermore, they document how these early encounters in the everydayness of schooling served as a solid foundation for their careers as teachers and, subsequently, teacher educators. These experiences motivated them to pursue research trajectories centered on studying issues of access and equality within educational structures and systems, ultimately developing innovative theoretical models within Disability Studies in Education. These models are designed to impact practices and policies, fostering a more inclusive and equitable educational landscape.

\n Weight: 494g\n
Dimension: 151 x 228 x 22 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781433185618\n
Edition number: New ed\n