Co-designing Disability-Centered Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies with Community Activists and Youth Scholars

• In Event: Resisting Curriculum as ‘Normalizing Text:’ A 20-Year Retrospective on Disability-Centered Epistemologies in Curriculum Theory

Abstract

Background/Purpose:
Urban educator preparation programs aim to prepare teacher candidates (pre-and in-service teachers) to honor and uphold diversity and difference and respond to inequity and injustice (Borrero & Sanchez, 2017; Crowson & Brandes, 2013). Yet, students of color with disabilities, and other multiply marginalized youth (e.g., youth of color experiencing homelessness) tend to be positioned as less smart and capable (Author, 2021; Author, 2022a). Such positioning results in disabled youth of color being overrepresented and more segregated in special education classrooms (Blanchett et al., 2009) and the targets of harsh disciplinary practices (Office for Civil Rights, 2021). Shifts in negative beliefs about disability and race, and resultant harmful, reductive teaching practices, begin by recentering disability and race and multiple intersecting identities (e.g., class, culture, language) in teacher education curriculum and pedagogy. We use a co-design circle process with educational partners to highlight these challenges and imagine possible solutions.

Theoretical Framing:
We utilize a co-developed framework generated by disabled community scholars and academic faculty: Disability-Centered Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (Authors, 2023) to support educators to disrupt current inequitable practices in schools, and inform future policy (Baglieri & Lalvani, 2019; Paris & Alim, 2014, 2017).

Methods:
Co-designing processes, which often center on families transforming schools (Ishimaru et al., 2019), purposefully tap into the wisdom and experiences of community activist-scholars and youth scholars, rather than relegating community members as unnecessary to education and youth as passive recipients of education. As Bergold & Thomas (2012) explained, we emphasize “collaborative research activities and joint knowledge production” (p. 195). We move away from current challenges in the education of multiply marginalized disabled youth of color, toward reimagining anti-racist, anti-ableist futures (Fesmire, 2003). We included a collaborative space with youth scholars, community scholars, and teacher educators working together over a 10-month co-design process.

Initial Findings/Significance:
This paper’s integrated approach, which builds on our past work in teacher development (Authors, 2024; Authors, 2023), leverages university-community co-design to produce feasible, effective, and sustainable teacher development interventions focused on changing educator beliefs and practices (Cipollone et al., 2022; Zygmunt et al., 2018). We transitioned from a process of building relationships/learning from one another to understanding community-centered hopes, dreams, concerns, and possibilities. Our collaborative group included some key conceptualizations of teacher education. Our summary of these themes included advocacy, resources, funding, student-centered curriculum, learning about where, why, and what teaching practices are happening, local and global collaborations, and administrator/leadership-level changes. As an example of advocacy, a parent/teacher educator and his daughter, a Black youth scholar-activist, shared their frustration, pain, and outrage at being underestimated by her teachers. Their supportive network provided words of affirmation and letters of support when administrators and teachers refused to honor her knowledge and expertise. In our efforts to expand teacher beliefs and practices, we believe community-centered knowledge is an integral part of this process. Moreover, interdisciplinary, intergenerational, community-centered knowledge is critical to ensure curriculum challenges normalcy and is disability-centered and culturally sustaining.

Authors

• Amanda L. Miller, Wayne State University

• Saili S. Kulkarni, San Jose State University

• Emily A. Nusbaum, University of California - Berkeley

• Ajya Wilson, Wayne County Community College

• Holly Pearson, Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

• Brianna J Dickens, Syracuse University