Love Is Praxis: Lived Experience to Classroom Lessons Through the Voices of Disabled Students, Practitioners, Mothers, and Siblings

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Relational Becomings: Embracing Diverse Ways of Knowing in Educational Praxis (Table 4)

Abstract

Disabled people and their caregivers are often positioned as inexpert receivers of information, rather than knowledge-bearers who bring rich perspectives into the classroom context. Framed by bell hook’s conceptualization of love as transformative praxis, we capture the lived experiences of fourteen disabled young adults, family members, and caring practitioners in a collection of personal narratives. Through critical ethnographic approaches, we are repositioning people with disability and family lived experience as knowledge-bearers, valuing them as educators who teach others in formal and informal ways. Each story introduces their life in time and context. This collection is for emerging general and special education teachers, other school personnel and practitioners, as well as faculty who prepare the next generations of classroom teachers.

Authors

• Lydia L Ocasio-Stoutenburg, Pennsylvania State University

• Yuchen Yang, Pennsylvania State University

• Azaria I. Cunningham, Boston University

• Karla Patricia Armendariz, Pennsylvania State University

• Nayma Sultana Mim, Pennsylvania State University

• Dana Patenaude, Pennsylvania State University

• Rebecca Zinn, Pennsylvania State University

• Ava Herr, Pennsylvania State University

• Jenna Spencer, Pennsylvania State University

• Ruby Humprhis, Pennsylvania State University

• Millie Rodriguez, Pennsylvania State University

• Aimee Grenada-Jeronimo, Pennsylvania State University

• Bianca Stoutenburg, Pennsylvania State University

• Courtney Kehoe, Pennsylvania State University

• Julia Sledz, Pennsylvania State University