Examining How Posthumanism Can Exist in Reimagining Disability-Inclusive Science Teaching and Learning Practices

• In Event: Beyond the Modern: The Ethical Need to Make Matter Matter for Truth in Science Education

Abstract

Purpose
The framing of disability as lacking in terms of the normative ideas of what constitutes a good, productive life juxtaposes against the more affirmative possibilities of the posthuman (Liddiard et al., 2019). The purpose of this theoretical paper is to reframe disability and reimagine inclusive teaching practices.

Perspective(s)

Recent developments in posthumanism and new materialisms have raised questions regarding disability and the potential for rearticulation of disability. Drawing on Braidotti’s work on posthuman critical theory, we aim to rupture a priori conceptualizations of disability and find new grounds to rearticulate disability and reimagine inclusive teaching practices.

Modes of Inquiry
The application of new materialism, posthumanism, DisCrit can work to reframe disability. In doing so, we consider the following assumptions of posthumanism: 1) bodies are always relational, 2) we reimagine the notion of human agency with a concept of becoming that refers to a change in the capacities of an entity (both humans and more-than-humans), 3) we leverage posthuman possibilities to acknowledge that disability matters through complex assemblages of social, cultural, material and discursive aspects of our lives. Furthermore, we draw on the tenets of DisCrit (Annamma et al., 2018) to interrogate framings of disability at the intersection of race and class. We will examine and inquire how the posthuman possibilities can help us reframe disability by juxtaposing critical disability assertions that disability is a political identity that is “socially constructed in tandem with race and class” (Annamma, Ferri, & Connor, 2018, p. 48). To that end, we ask: 1) how posthumanism and critical disability can engage one another; 2) how, why and when posthumanism can and should be deployed; and 3) how posthumanism functions when we rearticulate disability and reimagine inclusive science teaching and learning practices.
Materials
The authors of this theoretical paper draw from experiences as teacher-educators with scholarship focusing on science education, critical disabilities studies, and educational policy and law. We engage in dialogic reflexivity (Sherman et al., 2021) with one another to identify areas of tensions and promises in our individual and collective practices.
Warrants for Arguments
Broadly speaking, teacher preparation programs, informed by critical disability studies (see Annamma et al., 2019 on DisCrit), focus on inclusion and critique school systems that sort learners based on ableism (Booth et al., 2003; Naraian et al., 2021). This particular framing presumes that preservice teachers possess the agentive capability to shift school cultures yet pays little attention to their agency as entangled with other material and discursive entities. There needs a new framing – a posthuman thought – that directs us towards processes that are not solely centered within the individual teacher in order to reimagine inclusion to be more inclusive.
Significance
Goodley et al. (2018) posits that “to contemplate disability is to scrutinize inequality” (p. 973). Disability matters. In this vein, the consequences for not engaging in discussions of how disability is positioned in science teacher preparation courses, and broadly teacher education, has material impact on efforts to define and understand multiple truths as well as access to equity.

Authors

• Sophia Jeong, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Elena H. Silverman, Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis
  Presenting Author

• Maureen Negrelli Coomer, Colorado College
  Presenting Author