Intersectional Ways of Understanding Student Resistance in Classrooms Serving Students With Severe Disability Labels

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Ten
  In Roundtable Session: Using Disability Studies and Social Justice Perspectives to Explore Ability in Schools (Table 16)

Abstract

In this study, we drew from Disability Studies in Education (Connor, 2008) and resistance theory (Valenzuela, 2010) to explore the ways that students with severe disability labels took charge of what their teachers intended to be structured instructional routines. Refusing to comply, students exhibited resistance similar to that found among youth at the intersection of race, ethnicity, and language (Valenzuela, 1999) and other students with mild (Becker, 2010) and severe (Bøttcher, 2012, 2018) disability labels. We offer examples of the ways that the institution of schooling constructed the students’ bodyminds as severely disabled. When the students navigated these limiting discursive boundaries, they exhibited persistent and creative assertions of self that contested the very constructions that otherwise defined and constrained them.

Authors

• Charna D'Ardenne, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Karen Erickson
  Presenting Author