Centering Cripistemologies in Culture Circles: Building Community and Critical Pedagogy in Teacher Education

• In Event: Beyond Normal: Cripping Policy and Practice to Construct Liberatory Educational Possibilities

Abstract

Purpose
Disabled teacher candidates (TCs) have historically experienced harmful ableism in teacher preparation and barriers to the teacher workforce (Csoli & Gallagher, 2012; Jacobs et al., 2021; Loeppky, 2021). This is in spite of the wisdom, knowledge, and valuable lived experience they bring to teacher education and K-12 schools (Author 2 & Beneke, 2020). When teacher education programs do try to meet the needs of disabled teacher candidates, it is often rooted in a paradigm of accommodations that compel disabled TCs to conform to nondisabled standards (Strimel et al., 2023). Therefore, there is a need for radical means of support, care, and community building (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018) for disabled TCs that disrupts ableism in teacher preparation. In this study, 4 disabled TCs engaged in a series of culture circles (Freire, 2000; Souto-Manning, 2010; 2019) that foregrounded cripistemologies (Johnson & McRuer, 2014) in learning to enact critical pedagogy.

Theoretical Framework
We bought together cripistemology and culture circles. Cripistemology examines ways in which the lived experience of being disabled can (re)shape all aspects of academic research (Hickman & Serlin, 2019; Johnson & McRuer, 2014). Cripestemology is about reimagining scholarship so that it centers the bodily, mental, sensorial, and behavioral experiences of being disabled. Culture circles (Freire, 2000; Souto-Manning 2010; 2019) position learning as a social process rooted in community, providing time and space to enact critical pedagogy. Together, our conceptual framework allowed us to understand how disabled teacher candidates drew on their collective cripistimologies to problematize and support one another as they engage in critical praxis in school sites.
Methods and Data Sources
This investigation engaged four disabled teacher candidates (see Appendix A) in a series of culture circles that followed the problem-posing process (see Appendix B). Using our conceptual framework as a guide (Ravitch & Riggan, 2016), we conducted a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of the data using Dedoose through inductive and deductive reasoning. Data sources included:
1. Education Journey Maps (Annamma, 2016)
2. Transcripts from culture circles
3. Participant notes
4. Participant transformative Action Plans

Findings and Significance
We identified three emergent themes. Firstly, culture circles facilitated opportunities for participants to safely share how their past and present histories as disabled people informed their instruction and social positioning at school (Cripping Pedagogy). Secondly, while disability is not a monolith or single identity marker (Sins Invalid, 2019), each participant navigated an ableist world, which provided a shared lived experience that helped them connect with and challenge one another to disrupt an education system steeped in an ableist status quo (Cripping Learning Communities). Finally, culture circles were a space where participants could express disabled joy and unapologetically be their whole selves without fearing the consequences of disclosure or unmasking ((Re)claiming Self).
Our findings demonstrated how culture circles acted as a generative community space where participants' experiences were meaningfully centered, they could grapple with their internalized and external oppressions, and hone their critical pedagogy. Culture circles made clear the way in which teacher education is failing disabled teacher candidates, revealing an urgent need to crip both teacher education and K-12 systems.

Authors

• Kathryn M. Meyer, Boston University

• Molly Elizabeth Siuty, Temple University