Toward Disability-Centered, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies in Teacher Education

• In Event: Challenging Dysconscious Ableism and Dreaming Beyond Pathology in Teacher Education

Abstract

Purpose
In this presentation, we introduce Disability-Centered, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (DCCSPs; Authors, in review) as a way to (re)imagine teacher preparation to center the identities and experiences of multiply marginalized disabled youth of color. Noting an erasure of disability from intersectional identities in teacher education, DCCSPs build upon what King (1991) coined as dysconcious racism and Baglieri and Lalvani (2019) referred to as dysconsicous ableism highlighting the need for both of these concepts.We provide an overview and five key principles of this blended theory and pedagogical application, which marry the tenets of DisCrit (Annamma et al., 2013) with Paris and Alim’s (2014) loving critiques of previous conceptualizations of asset-oriented frameworks. We note how DCCSPs expand from DisCrit and CSPs independently and similar frameworks, such as the cross-pollination of UDL and CSPs (Waitoller & King Thorius, 2016). We provide implications of how this framework can expand by positioning disability as a necessary intersectional marker of difference in teacher education spaces.

Theoretical Framework/Findings
This conceptual framework and pedagogical application in our early work evolved from DisCrit (Annamma et al., 2013) and CSPs (Alim & Paris, 2017; Paris & Alim, 2014). In other words, we used CSPs to bridge working with disabled activists, poverty scholars, and community scholars of color from DisCrit theory to pedagogy and praxis for education. Both DisCrit and CSPs emphasize the experiences and perspectives of multiply marginalized individuals and groups as indispensable and legitimate to education (Matsuda, 1987). By combining DisCrit and CSPs, we highlight the strengths, gifts, and solutions that multiply marginalized youth in P-12 spaces and multiply marginalized adults across spaces, including disabled activists, poverty scholars, and community scholars of color bring to classrooms and school communities [See Appendix A].

Significance
Paris and Alim (2014) explain that the future of CSP must extend the previous visions of asset pedagogies by demanding explicitly pluralist outcomes that are not centered on White, middle-class, monolingual, and monocultural norms of educational achievement” (p. 95). We expand upon previous calls for cross-pollinating culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSPs) (Waitoller & King-Thorius, 2016), informed by disability studies and critical race theory (DisCrit; Annamma et al., 2013), by centering disability and blending CSPs and DisCrit for teacher education. Expanding upon notions of dysconscious racism (King, 1991) and ableism (Baglieri & Lalvani, 2019), DCCSPs integrate the experiences and knowledge of multiply marginalized disabled activists of color into teacher education spaces while reimagining these spaces to center access and representation.

Authors

• Saili S. Kulkarni, San Jose State University
  Presenting Author

• Amanda L. Miller, Wayne State University
  Presenting Author

• Emily A. Nusbaum, Mills College
  Presenting Author

• Holly Pearson, Framingham State University
  Presenting Author