Performative Texts and Community Performances as a Strategy for Sharing Findings: Experiences of Labeling and Being Labeled

• In Event: Labeling and Performing (Dis)ability in Education

Abstract

Scholars have long called for work that questions and complicates taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of disability and the process of being labeled disabled within the context of public schools. Though laws and federal policies are taught to pre-service teachers in preparation and certification programs, and made available to the public in official policies posted online, we argue that this is not sufficient. In this paper we share the process and experience of sharing research findings around the experience of special education meetings in the format of a community performance. Drawing upon critical performance methodologies, we present the process of constructing a performative text and inviting the community at large to actively participate in the interpretation of the findings.

Authors

• Rachael Gabriel, University of Connecticut

• Jessica Nina Lester, Indiana University