Supporting the Agency of Young Children With Disabilities: An Autoethnography From an Inclusive Classroom Teacher

• In Event: Disrupting Notions of Normalcy and White Supremacy: Radical Imaginations Across Educational Research

Abstract

Purpose: This presentation explores how one teacher supported young children with disabilities to act on behalf of their larger community. Additionally, this presentation critiques the mainstream early childhood notion of “self-regulation.” In this classroom, children with disabilities were able to choose what they wanted to do even if it was not what the adult, i.e., the teacher wanted. Too often, children’s bodies are sites of control and discipline; they are positioned as incapable of self-rule. I disrupt the ideology of normalcy, where teachers perceive children with disabilities as incapable to make decisions on their own “which contributes to educational inequities that are based on the children’s race, cultural practices, language and perceived ability” (Annamma, et al., 2013, p. 1279). Through the use of counterstories (Yosso, 2013), I demonstrate how children of Color with a variety of disabilities were permitted to be civic actors in their inclusive classroom community that was still subject to the standardized Head Start regulations.

Theoretical framework: Using Mill’s (1997) construct of self-rule and a communitarian construct of civic action (Etzioni, 1993; Delanty, 2002), this paper details how I supported the movement and decision-making of young children with disabilities to be their full selves.

Methods: This presentation details auto-ethnographic (Muncey, 2010) data from three years of teaching within an inclusive pre-K classroom. The main data sources are autobiographical analysis of teacher documented reflections and inclusion classroom videos. The inclusion classroom videos are drawn from data collected in an international comparative video-cued multivocal ethnographic study (Tobin, et al., 2019).

Results: Juan (pseudonym), a 3yr old Latinx child with an IEP for noncategorical disability with a suspicion of intellectual disability and speech language impairment, communicated with words and phrases in English and Spanish, with hand gestures and visual aids. As Juan and I waited for the other children to join us at the door, I kneeled down on the floor next to him to look at the children’s family photos posted on the door. Juan points to a family photo and as he looks at me to show me, Jason (pseudonym) then comes from behind me and swings on my neck, almost taking me down to the floor. I say in a calm and agentic voice, “Oh Jason, you are strong. Oh that hurts. Ouch, that hurts.” Juan then offers his assistance and says, “stop” to Jason. Juan then proceeds to kick the door. Jason then stops swinging from my neck. Juan acted on my behalf by using his full range of capabilities to provide his assistance for Jason to stop swinging from my neck.

Significance: The counterstory demonstrates the key intentional practices I enacted for children to have agency (Adair, 2014) to make decisions for themselves and on behalf of their classroom community. The children and I resisted the “invisible ways racism and ableism circulate interdependently, often in neutralized and invisible ways, to uphold notions of normalcy” (Annama, et al., 2013, p. 11). This resistance leads to endless possibilities for children to be their full selves.

Author

• Monica Alonzo, University of Texas at Austin