Constructing Possibilities: Making Ableist Inequities Visible and Disruptible Through Dialogic Read-Alouds With Young Children

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 1:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Critically Examining Identities, Voices, and Literature Response With Students and Educators (Table 3)

Abstract

Using social and emotional learning frameworks, we explored young children’s responses to picturebook characters with disabilities and how they changed over a 10-week period. Children’s early responses focused on information gathering regarding specific disabilities, underscoring the lack of disability representation and acknowledgement in picturebooks and school activities. Over time children identified and interrogated discriminatory actions and systems depicted in picturebooks we shared. We call for inclusion and representation of disability in DEI initiatives and early elementary classrooms, with thoughtful selection, organization, and presentation of instructional materials and activities. Including strengths-based representations and real stories of discrimination and ableism framed by social emotional learning goals will give children opportunities to respond to these inequities.

Authors

• H. Emily Hayden, Strategic Education Research Partnership

• Angela Tuttle Prince, Iowa State University