Co-constructing Inclusive Praxis with Teachers Candidates

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Cripping Teacher Education: Unforgetting Histories and Co-Constructing Inclusive Futures

Abstract

This study examined how transforming the required special education course into an inclusive education course underpinned by Critical Disability Studies (CDS)—and amplifying this lens throughout the broader B.Ed. program—shaped teacher candidates’ emerging and evolving inclusive praxis. Within this program, the re-designed inclusion course introduced key concepts such as disability as a social identity, disability voice, ableism, disability justice, universal design for learning 3.0, and self-advocacy. From these lenses, we take up UDL not as an accommodation for disability, but as an ecological, diversity-affirming approach that builds classroom pedagogy around the identities, needs, and strengths of learners (CAST, 2024).

Authors

• Carly Beth Christensen, University of British Columbia

• Leyton Schnellert, University of British Columbia

• Amy Caesar, University of British Columbia

• Andrea Kellaway, University of British Columbia

• Shelley Moore, University of British Columbia