Claiming Disability? Exploring Disability Knowledge and Identity in Schools

• In Event: 25.054 - Disability Narrative Reclamation: The importance of Raising the Voices of Disabled Students

Abstract

Whether acknowledged or not, students labeled with disabilities engage in complex meaning making about the social meaning of their disability, its intersectionality with other aspects of identity, and lack of visibility of disability that surrounds students. This study attempts to connect students to participation and membership in a disability community with a rich history, strong activist roots, and a positive sense of agency. Through critical theories and methods, this project utilizes interviews with disabled youth and adults, and a photovoice project in order to understand, conceptualize, and develop disability identity in adolescents and potentially argue for the adoption of this view of disability in special education contexts as a matter of conceptual, social, and academic importance for students with disabilities.

Author

• Carlyn Mueller, Vanderbilt University