Teaching About Disability and Formatively Assessing Students With Disabilities in English Language Arts: Potential Constraints to Enacting Disability Studies in Education

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research-in-Progress Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Examining the Experiences of Students With Disabilities Across Sectors: Discipline, Pedagogy, and Sense of Belonging (Table 1)

Abstract

In this qualitative research study, I applied a Disability Studies in Education (DSE) lens to formative assessment in secondary English Language Arts (ELA) settings, a pedagogical practice that might otherwise be used to rationalize continued segregation of students with disabilities. I examined the ways three ELA teachers of students with and without disabilities with expressed commitments to DSE used pedagogical reasoning to make sense of the DSE principles reflected in their formative assessment practices when teaching about disability. Teachers reduced barriers, negotiated power, adopted alternative perspectives, promoted continuous (un)learning, interrogated ableism, highlighted disability representation in curricula, and emphasized disabled students' personal experiences. However, this research exposed factors that might constrain a more full enactment of disability.

Author

• Ashley Pollitt, The College of New Jersey