Multiple Ways of Learning About Disability: Literature Discussions, Critical Inquiry, and the Arts

• In Event: Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: Text, Context, and Narrating Identities of Self and Other

Abstract

This qualitative study reports on two extended curricular units on disability, during which elementary students explored this topic through literature discussions, critical inquiry, and drama and art. The study is framed by a disability studies perspective, which posits that disability has had moral, medical, and social constructions throughout its history, and literature mirrors the social conditions within which it was written. In socially constructing notions of disability, not only does literature reflect societal attitudes and values, but readers are able to understand and critique literature and the kinds of representations that are present in them. This study shows that children were able to offer diverse ways of examining images of disability in order to understand broader social and cultural aspects.

Author

• Donna Sayers Adomat, Indiana University