Mothers as Advocates in (Re)Imagining a Just World for Children with Dis/abilities

• In Event: Cripping and Queering Advocacy and Experience

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to situate mothers of children with dis/abilities, within the discourse of educational research as advocates and knowledge holders who can reveal injustice and participate in reimagining a caring world for their children. By using qualitative methods, five mothers’ life history interviews and a focus-group interview were collected as data. The findings revealed the challenges that mothers experienced and how they advocated for their children against the larger system that continues to marginalize their children of color with dis/abilities. In this paper, one mother's life story will be focused on contextualizing the meaning of dis/ability in her son's schooling and explicating her role as an advocate for her son using DisCrit as a theoretical lens.

Author

• Sunmin Lee, Texas State University