Community Engagement, Disability Justice, and Transformative Possibilities in Teaching

• In Event: Sustaining Disability in Teacher Education Programs: A Symposium on Disability Studies Cross-Pollination With Asset Pedagogies

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose is to understand tensions and possibilities during a course in which doctoral students were provided opportunities for experiential learning with disabled activists, artists, and community scholars, to support creation of a Pedagogical Toolkit focused on disability justice, art, and culture for educators. Partnerships addressing community engagement (CE) and disability justice remained at the center of the course.
Theoretical Framework
Critical disability studies (CDS) can broaden how CE is enacted through first-person narratives, inquiry into disability art and culture, and “crip time.” Crip time, which is “flex time not just expanded but exploded; it requires reimagining our notions of what can and should happen in time, or recognizing how expectations of 'how long things take' are based on very particular minds and bodies,” invites us to re-envision how CE occurs in time and space (Kafer, 2013, pp. 25-46). Epistemologically, CE calls for recognizing different ways people come to know and experience the world and challenges the privileging of certain knowledge types over others. A CE commitment to participatory approaches requires accessible pedagogies that reflect the needs of community members and students in an interactive space. CDS places concerns of disabled community members at the forefront, which may not allow for easy answers to the tensions associated with time and student agendas.
Methods and Data Sources
We used a transformative learning framework to understand the duoethnography (Norris, 2008; Norris & Sawyer, 2012) between the university faculty member and community scholar who co-taught the course. Our conversation was grounded in the different positionalities we occupied from within and outside the academy, lived experiences, and our relationship to the course content. Our duoethnography represents a conversation within and across theoretical, personal, and professional spaces-- and as such takes up individual moments of transformation, discomfort, and ultimately praxis.
We used our in-person and electronic communication after individual course sessions and at the conclusion of the semester, as well as responses to student work to reflect and discuss issues that arose throughout the semester, via email and phone. We also utilized the course syllabus- and specifically the purpose of the course and associated learning outcomes articulated on the syllabus, in our duoethnography.
Results
Despite utilizing CDS as a transformative alternative to the enduring ideals of traditional special education, students seemed unable to achieve the form of praxis at the core of our collaboration. The deep, paradigmatic shift that is often the outcome of true praxis was largely absent in student-related course materials. We assert the need for a deeper understanding of the ways that critical and interdisciplinary disability studies and the principles of disability justice can be used as a transformative (and necessary) alternative to the deficit-based paradigms that undergird traditional special education.
Significance
It seemed that students could not relinquish traditional ways of knowing about disability that historically have been the exclusive purview of traditional special education. Many of them expressed discomfort with experiential parts of the course. Other students could not consider content development beyond the one-off lesson plan.

Authors

• Emily A. Nusbaum, Mills College

• Nicola McClung, University of San Francisco

• Leroy F. Moore