Images that Dehumanize: Deconstructing and deposing ableism in Special Education curriculum

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 11:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: “Seeing” Social Contexts through Innovative Methodologies

Abstract

Foregrounding our lived experiences as disabled scholars of education research, we expose how commercial curriculum images dehumanize disabled people. To defamiliarize conventionalized discourses, we employ Foucauldian, Ranciérian, and anarchist theories about power to construct a new object of inquiry called Disability Education. Our empirical methodology synthesizes positionological analysis (e.g., data from our life histories as deaf, autistic, and ADHD scholars), critical visual analysis, and digital ethnography. Our findings illuminate a harmful hegemony of ableism based on multimodal forms of power/knowledge that circulate in Special Education. By interrogating power/knowledge imbalances, we posit a new social imaginary, (e.g., Disability Education) and propose pedagogies and curricula based on research praxes and disability axiologies that are non-coercive, socially-just, and beautiful.

Authors

• Michael Edmond Skyer, University of Tennessee

• David M Bowers, University of Tennessee

• Leah Oakes, University of Tennessee