Implications and Practical Applications on Considering Disability in Social Spaces: Teaching School Leadership About Disability via Dr. Linda Ware's Scholarship

• In Event: Imagining Disability Otherwise: The Impact of Dr. Linda P. Ware's Scholarship and Mentoring in Educational Contexts and Beyond

Abstract

Relevant to disability in U.S. K-12 schooling, Thomas Hehir (2005) discussed ‘the law’ versus ‘the spirit of the law.’ Dr. Linda P. Ware teaches to consider what the spirit of the law is, what it is yet to be, and the possibility of why it will always be unfinished specific to disability (Ware, 2004, 2016, 2020; Ware, Stolz, Dinaro, 2019; Ware ‘Forward’ in Valle & Connor 2019). Her work provides a disability studies in education (DSE) analysis of why disability has often an unnoticed absence. Ware’s work engages how (a) educators learn about disability (Ware, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2016, 2017, 2020), (b) school administrators learn to lead about difference (2004, 2010, 2017, 2020), and (c) children interact with disability (Ware, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2016, 2017, 2020; Ware, & Hatz, 2016). “A catalyst is a facilitator and conduit for change. Perceptions can influence actions and be catalysts for the knowledge used to lead others about topics that affect people with disabilities” (Dinaro, 2014, p. 34). Ware’s work is a catalyst for critiquing assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs about exclusion and the impact on disabled learners, as well as their peers who interact with practices of exclusion. Even in segregated settings, Ware’s work provides a coach-like call to inspire access in the curriculum and social spaces by asking us to identify and address “established unexamined accepted ways of thinking” (Ware, 2016, 2017). Her work continues to apprise existing imposed realities that impact disabled people in and out of their Prek-12 schooling.

Her foundational contributions in DS/DSE as an education faculty attending the first NEH Disability Studies Institute in 2000, have reached many teachers and leaders as the pivotal beginning and support to be able to “complicate their thinking” (Ware 2020). Along with veteran practioners, her work is necessary as a formative place to advance integrative conversations with beginning educators and administrators. As a former special education administrator for curriculum and professional development, her work is evident in my awareness, creativity, actions, and influence. Based on her scholarship, I was able to address “Unexamined assumptions about disability and uninspired curriculum” (Ware, 2020, p. 181) in my PreK-22 administrative role. In this paper, using Ware’s DSE scholarship, I provide DSE connections as an applied field to shift practices and processes in PreK-12 education and leadership that aid in teach disability through a DSE lens, and concern PreK-12 administrators to envision disability as value-added.

Author

• Andrea Dinaro, Concordia University Chicago