Pedagogical Resistance in Crip Cyberspace: A Study of Crip Liberatory Pedagogy within Online Neurodivergent Community

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

Abstract

​Objective:
Given the isolation that systemic ableism imposes on disabled communities (Kapsalis et al., 2024), social media is a catalyst for neurodivergent people to connect, share, and co-educate, ultimately moving towards actionable liberation. This research studies online neurodivergent community as a site of public pedagogy, (Sandlin et al., 2010, Karsgaaard, 2023), using the counterhegemonic lens we name, “crip liberatory pedagogy” (CLP). The study intervenes into accessible ("special") education research, whose focus remains primarily on schools as sites of education for and about disabled people. As our community faces active state efforts to erase our existence, such as through bans on research terms like "disability", we as neurodivergent researchers aim for this study to archive our presence in the historical fabric of disability culture (Jarvie-Dolinar, 2025). In furthering our pedagogical and archival pursuit, we ask: how does online neurodivergent community engage in crip liberatory pedagogy?

Theoretical Framework:
Disability justice centers multiply marginalized disabled people, emphasizing principles such as interdependence and collective access (Sins Invalid, 2019). Freire (2005) discusses pedagogy of the oppressed as bottom-up liberatory education by those most marginalized educating each other and their oppressors in pursuit of collective liberation. This pedagogy hinges on acute awareness of one's oppression and oppressors, and the agency to recreate the world. Operating within a disability justice paradigm, Kafai (2021) draws on Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed in describing education among queer of color disabled community, noting that “we, in defiance, learn to reclaim our bodymind autonomies and histories” (p. 57).

Building on this framework, CLPs are pedagogical practices of resistance and creativity through which disabled people recognize and name the oppression they face, reclaim ownership of their communities and stories, engage in survival work, and build towards alternative futures. This pedagogy necessitates interdependence between and among disabled people and the centering of those who are most impacted by interlocking and context-dependent systems of oppression (positionality as intersectionality in motion).
Method and Data Source: We used critical discourse analysis to study resistant discourse on social media (Bolin, 2020; Kuo, 2018). We searched TikTok using, “Neurodivergent,” “NeurodivergentBIPOC,” and “Neuroqueer.” We inductively coded 163 TikTok posts through the lens of CLP. Through reflexive journaling, we continuously examined our assumptions and positionality (Soedirgo & Glas, 2020).

Major Findings:
Methodologically, neurodivergent people shared names/language for neurodivergent experiences, built accessibility/care into posts, engaged in shared learning, and harnessed situationality/embodiment. They used inventiveness such as acting out scenes and using compare/contrast sequences. They reframed oppressive narratives about their community. Topically, users discussed neurodivergent traits, experiences, sharing tips, inter-neurotype communication, neurodivergent culture, intersections of identities with neurodivergence, and resource sharing.

Significance: Resistant disability scholarship and activism has long drawn attention to disability-related education that extends beyond school boundaries (Hamraie, 2017; Piepzna-Amarsinha 2018). This study takes an empirical approach to further critical and intersectional scholarship into disability-related education outside of the classroom within disabled community. In doing so, it joins a larger movement towards centering disabled community, multiply marginalized experiences, and liberatory educational practices within special education research.

Authors

• Andrea F. Parente, Temple University

• Isabella Ramirez de Arellano, Temple University