Disability Sustaining Pedagogy: Elementary School Literacy Teaching Based on the Insights of Teachers With Disabilities

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

We present a stance, terminology, and practice for educating disabled and non-disabled students that honors disability identities as cultural and a form of diversity worthy of sustaining. Disability Sustaining Pedagogy (DSP), a counterpart to Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, values the intuition, knowledge, and lived experiences of disabled individuals and calls for thinking beyond teaching practices that make curriculum and classrooms accessible by supporting students in making connections, identifying role models, and building communities with other disabled individuals - including teachers with disabilities. DSP supports access to dominant and disabled ways of knowing and challenges deficit notions of disabled individuals and disability cultures, without essentializing disability identities. We share four examples of the teacher narratives from which the principles of DSP were generated.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Disability Studies in Education

Chair

• Laurie M. Rabinowitz, Skidmore College

Papers

• Using My Experiences With Dysgraphia to Develop Joyful Readers - Todd Lavine, New York City Department of Education

• Using Puppets to Create Kinesthetic Access to UDL (Universal Design for Learning) Checkpoints - Charlotte Maltby, Bank Street College of Education

• Consulting on Assistive Technology in Education: Me, As My Own First Client - Mark Surabian, Pace University

• Disability Sustaining Children’s Literature - Veronica Walton, Bank Street College of Education

Discussant

• Amy Leigh Tondreau, University of Maryland - Baltimore County