At the Nexus of Disability Studies in (Special) Education: Toward Consiliencatory Frameworks for Praxis

• In Event: Consilience-ing, Self-Study-ing, Radical Love-ing at the Boundaries of Disability Studies in Education and (Special) Education

Abstract

This paper critically examines my experiences as a new assistant professor of special education within a predominantly white institution in the midwest at the boundaries of special education and Disability Studies in Education (DSE) given my positionality as a Latino gay male with an auditory Learning Disability who experienced the special education system from K-16.

A ‘consiliencatory conceptual framework’ was used including special education, DSE and a radical love approach toward praxis within the boundaries of the latter disciplines (Fromm, 1956). A ‘consiliencatory conceptual framework’ connects multiple paradigms into conversation in order to inform my core-identity, that is, my ‘self-narrativatization and personal-trajectory’ within DSE and special education for learning and systems of thought and ‘(cross)disciplinary change’ within education (Foucault, 2000; Gee, 2011).

The methods include constructs from self-study and consilience methodologies (Tidwell, Heston, & Fitzgerald, 2009; Wilson, 1998). The following self-study quality indicators were used: “thorough description of the context, data collection, and analysis, thoughtful problematization of the researcher and . . . [his] . . . practice, indications for how the study changed the researcher’s practice, and description of how it might contribute to the knowledge base for teaching” (Schulte, 2015). Complementarily, consilience provided me the interdisciplinary eclecticism to critically examine the complexity I experience on a daily basis on the ground as it relates to the fear, vulnerability, and eventual bullying I experienced as a first year assistant professor of special education.

The data sources were my experiences of being bullied as a first year assistant professor. Specifically, these included critical reflections in the form of journal entries about my experiences and a year-long course syllabus that was related to the social and professional context in which the bullying occurred. Both were analyzed using the constant comparative method and reflexive, retrospective analysis (Brandenburg, 2008; Glaser & Strauss, 2000; Samaras, Hicks & Berger, 2004). Bullough and Gitlin (1995) posit “to know the past is to know oneself as an individual and as a representative of a socio-historical moment in time; like others each person is a victim, vehicle, and ultimately a resolution of a culture’s dilemmas” (p. 25).

I was bullied due to the sociocultural milieu related to the boundaries of special education and DSE working to and through each of us. The conflicting paradigms from which the discord and bullying ensued were not the individuals’ per se, but were due to the historical-discursive and material ways our individual biographies and perspectives at the point in time within the nexus of special education and DSE. The following themes emerged: “Kids don’t learn because their frontal lobes are not fully developed,” “It’s like being in a racist environment,” “Just get over it,” and “Beyond "Lazy and Unmotivated" Why Parents and Teachers Need to Know about Executive Skills.”

The scholarly significance of this consiliencatory, self-study and radical love work at the boundary of special education and DSE has theoretical, research and practice implications for individual, societal, systems and (consiliencatory)-disciplinary change and humanization within the academy and educational contexts (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011).

Author

• David Isaac Hernandez-Saca, University of Northern Iowa