This presentation explores initial efforts to evaluate the impact of interactive ethnography with... more This presentation explores initial efforts to evaluate the impact of interactive ethnography with guest speakers and community-based activities on the development of students’ empathy for persons with disabilities. Lesley University undergraduate students enrolled in psychology and special education courses wrote papers, designed combined visual and text responses, and completed course evaluations reflecting on face-to-face interactions with adults with disabilities or parents of children with disabilities. What impact did such direct interpersonal connections have on the students who are preparing for professions in related support services? Do the students demonstrate understandings that reflect deep, more critical self-analysis? The presenters describe definitions of and current research about how empathy could be useful to evaluate students’ written expression and suggest ways the intersection of face-to-face experiences and written expression can be used in future course work to support the development of empathy for persons with disabilities. Implications for other courses in education, social work, counseling and therapy will be discussed
250 words max) The Visual Literacy InFUSION Project is a professional development program designe... more 250 words max) The Visual Literacy InFUSION Project is a professional development program designed to increase the creative teaching and assessment of learning in visual literacy to transform undergraduate student learning experiences. Funded by the Davis Educational Foundation, Lesley University created a model for infusing visual literacy across the liberal arts and sciences disciplines and professional majors in the College of Art & Design and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Collaborating in cross-school partnerships, a group of 16 faculty explored visual literacy across their various disciplines to create pedagogical projects to expand students’ understanding of the power of images as tools for both learning and communicating what one knows. As Peter Felton points out in “Visual Literacy” (2008): To train students to see critically and to create in multiple modes should be an essential component of a liberal education. That will require not only re-envisioning our curricul...
The Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, 2014
Families are moving at ever increasing numbers. Relocating a family is challenging under any cir... more Families are moving at ever increasing numbers. Relocating a family is challenging under any circumstance, but transitioning a child with a disability between schools, especially to new states or countries can be particularly difficult. When families seek full inclusion, the situation becomes more complex. This paper describes one American family’s journey through the moving process and how that process brought to the surface ways in which disability is socially and culturally constructed. Despite federal legislation in some countries regarding special education and the involvement of families, practices differ geographically, sometimes significantly, when determining eligibility, communicating with parents, and discussing how support services will be provided. The author - a parent, educational researcher, and instructor of pre-service teachers – asks questions throughout the family’s relocation and examines people’s “storylines” or habits of conversation (Gee, 1999) to get at...
This presentation offers a variety of locations in which Lesley University students and alumni ex... more This presentation offers a variety of locations in which Lesley University students and alumni examine inequities at the intersections of marginalized identities focusing on disability. The panelists describe their work involving ethnographic interviewing of and portraiture research about culturally and linguistically diverse families, universally designed lesson planning about disability rights in K–12 curriculum, and collaborative teaching about disability studies at the intersection of ableism and other discriminatory practices
Family participation in the special education process has been federally mandated for 40 years, a... more Family participation in the special education process has been federally mandated for 40 years, and educators recognize that effective collaboration with their students' families leads to improved academic and social outcomes for students. However, while some family-school relationships are positive and collaborative, many are not, particularly for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) families. This article provides practice guidelines based in research for teachers who seek to improve their practices when working with CLD families who have children served by special education.
<p>Keywords: disability, methodolog... more <p>Keywords: disability, methodology, portraiture, social justice, special education </p><p>Historically, the dominant research paradigms involving the study of people with disabilities involved experimentally designed studies or other medically orientated approaches. This paper examines portraiture as a form of qualitative inquiry offering emancipatory possibilities for children with significant disabilities and transformative positive reinterpretations of disability as a social construct for their teachers and other people in their lives.  Three narrative portraits of young people with disabilities were created based on a year-long portraiture study involving the collection of observational data, informal interviews, artifacts, and discourse analysis to capture the “essence” of their humanness.  Through an examination of this portrait study and others from across the humanities, this paper provides examples where the “subjects” asserted themselves in ways akin to Giroux’s agency (1987) suggesting portraiture might provide a unique and credible avenue to respectfully study and learn more about people with disabilities too often left on the fringe of society. </p>
Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, 2017
Although countries across the globe support the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Person... more Although countries across the globe support the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), when faced with competing economic priorities, their policies and practices too often negatively impact children with disabilities and their families (Ferguson, 2008). Current social and educational structures are implicated in inequitable services, particularly for those families from nondominant languages and minority racial and ethnic groups (McCall & Skrtic, 2009; Ong-Dean, 2009). Recognizing the importance of contexts and power imbalances, we posit that the broader communities in which families live and that determine the opportunities they are afforded, should be explicitly addressed when evaluating a family's quality of life. This article provides an analysis of family quality of life in the context of parents' struggle to access equitable education for their children with disabilities, and suggests that the Quality of Life (QoL) conceptual framework (Brown, Schalock, & Brown, 2009), having already expanded to include the individual to the family unit, be further extended to engage the community. To illustrate, we describe two community-based projects aimed at moving family involvement in special education away from a model of individual advocacy, situated within western ethnocentric organizational structures that rely on sociocultural capital, to grassroots collective activism.
The least restrictive environment (LRE) mandate of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Ac... more The least restrictive environment (LRE) mandate of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has long been questioned as to whether it has fulfilled the original intent of the law. This advocacy brief provides an updated analysis of the flaws underlying the principle of LRE, a mandate that exists at the nexus of cultural beliefs about disability, the influence of the medical model on special education, and the misguided link between intensity of services and more restrictive environments. We review the origins of LRE; summarize research on the positive relationship between placement in general education and student outcomes; describe six flaws of LRE's grounding in the continuum model of educational placement that sanctions segregation; present data that illustrate little progress over time towards general education placement for students with intellectual disability, and outline some key court rulings about what constitutes the least restrictive environment. In summary, w...
Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 2016
The TASH Inclusive Education National Committee responded to Horner and Dunlap’s call to ensure t... more The TASH Inclusive Education National Committee responded to Horner and Dunlap’s call to ensure that future research integrates inclusive values with strong science by developing an inclusive education national research advocacy agenda. Qualitative methods were implemented to answer three questions: (a) What is the state of inclusive education research? (b) What research still must be done? and (c) What are recommendations for a national inclusive education research advocacy agenda? The findings include 15 areas organized within three domains advocating for continued research across systems-level capacity building, building and classroom capacity, and student learning and development. Implications for research and policy reform are discussed.
We live in the Golden Age of the memoir. Everyone has a story to tell, and a growing number are f... more We live in the Golden Age of the memoir. Everyone has a story to tell, and a growing number are finding their way to publication. The disability memoir has certainly been a part of this growth. It is refreshing to note how many of these recent narrative accounts of living with a disability have been written from what might be broadly termed a “disability studies perspective” taking on a more critical, socio-cultural orientation than the traditional ‘inspiration in the face of personal tragedy’ motif. The list of such accounts is growing (a very short and incomplete list would include works by Anne Finger (2006), Simi Linton (2006), Harriet McBryde Johnson (2005), Eli Clare (1999), Rod Michalko (1998), and Stephen Kuusisto (1998). Beyond the personal memoir, there has been a similar explosion of memoirs written by family members of individuals with disabilities (parents, siblings, and children). However, unlike the personal memoir, relatively few of these “family narratives” have adopted a clear disability studies perspective...
It was a late winter afternoon when I sat in the small town Dairy Queen cafe across from Katie wh... more It was a late winter afternoon when I sat in the small town Dairy Queen cafe across from Katie while she ate a vanilla ice cream sundae. Katie, 17, was a high school senior student attending a special education program referred to as Life Skills. While researching the lived experiences of young people with significant disabilities, I sought to engage Katie in conversation about school and friends.
This presentation explores initial efforts to evaluate the impact of interactive ethnography with... more This presentation explores initial efforts to evaluate the impact of interactive ethnography with guest speakers and community-based activities on the development of students’ empathy for persons with disabilities. Lesley University undergraduate students enrolled in psychology and special education courses wrote papers, designed combined visual and text responses, and completed course evaluations reflecting on face-to-face interactions with adults with disabilities or parents of children with disabilities. What impact did such direct interpersonal connections have on the students who are preparing for professions in related support services? Do the students demonstrate understandings that reflect deep, more critical self-analysis? The presenters describe definitions of and current research about how empathy could be useful to evaluate students’ written expression and suggest ways the intersection of face-to-face experiences and written expression can be used in future course work to support the development of empathy for persons with disabilities. Implications for other courses in education, social work, counseling and therapy will be discussed
250 words max) The Visual Literacy InFUSION Project is a professional development program designe... more 250 words max) The Visual Literacy InFUSION Project is a professional development program designed to increase the creative teaching and assessment of learning in visual literacy to transform undergraduate student learning experiences. Funded by the Davis Educational Foundation, Lesley University created a model for infusing visual literacy across the liberal arts and sciences disciplines and professional majors in the College of Art & Design and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Collaborating in cross-school partnerships, a group of 16 faculty explored visual literacy across their various disciplines to create pedagogical projects to expand students’ understanding of the power of images as tools for both learning and communicating what one knows. As Peter Felton points out in “Visual Literacy” (2008): To train students to see critically and to create in multiple modes should be an essential component of a liberal education. That will require not only re-envisioning our curricul...
The Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, 2014
Families are moving at ever increasing numbers. Relocating a family is challenging under any cir... more Families are moving at ever increasing numbers. Relocating a family is challenging under any circumstance, but transitioning a child with a disability between schools, especially to new states or countries can be particularly difficult. When families seek full inclusion, the situation becomes more complex. This paper describes one American family’s journey through the moving process and how that process brought to the surface ways in which disability is socially and culturally constructed. Despite federal legislation in some countries regarding special education and the involvement of families, practices differ geographically, sometimes significantly, when determining eligibility, communicating with parents, and discussing how support services will be provided. The author - a parent, educational researcher, and instructor of pre-service teachers – asks questions throughout the family’s relocation and examines people’s “storylines” or habits of conversation (Gee, 1999) to get at...
This presentation offers a variety of locations in which Lesley University students and alumni ex... more This presentation offers a variety of locations in which Lesley University students and alumni examine inequities at the intersections of marginalized identities focusing on disability. The panelists describe their work involving ethnographic interviewing of and portraiture research about culturally and linguistically diverse families, universally designed lesson planning about disability rights in K–12 curriculum, and collaborative teaching about disability studies at the intersection of ableism and other discriminatory practices
Family participation in the special education process has been federally mandated for 40 years, a... more Family participation in the special education process has been federally mandated for 40 years, and educators recognize that effective collaboration with their students' families leads to improved academic and social outcomes for students. However, while some family-school relationships are positive and collaborative, many are not, particularly for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) families. This article provides practice guidelines based in research for teachers who seek to improve their practices when working with CLD families who have children served by special education.
<p>Keywords: disability, methodolog... more <p>Keywords: disability, methodology, portraiture, social justice, special education </p><p>Historically, the dominant research paradigms involving the study of people with disabilities involved experimentally designed studies or other medically orientated approaches. This paper examines portraiture as a form of qualitative inquiry offering emancipatory possibilities for children with significant disabilities and transformative positive reinterpretations of disability as a social construct for their teachers and other people in their lives.  Three narrative portraits of young people with disabilities were created based on a year-long portraiture study involving the collection of observational data, informal interviews, artifacts, and discourse analysis to capture the “essence” of their humanness.  Through an examination of this portrait study and others from across the humanities, this paper provides examples where the “subjects” asserted themselves in ways akin to Giroux’s agency (1987) suggesting portraiture might provide a unique and credible avenue to respectfully study and learn more about people with disabilities too often left on the fringe of society. </p>
Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, 2017
Although countries across the globe support the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Person... more Although countries across the globe support the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), when faced with competing economic priorities, their policies and practices too often negatively impact children with disabilities and their families (Ferguson, 2008). Current social and educational structures are implicated in inequitable services, particularly for those families from nondominant languages and minority racial and ethnic groups (McCall & Skrtic, 2009; Ong-Dean, 2009). Recognizing the importance of contexts and power imbalances, we posit that the broader communities in which families live and that determine the opportunities they are afforded, should be explicitly addressed when evaluating a family's quality of life. This article provides an analysis of family quality of life in the context of parents' struggle to access equitable education for their children with disabilities, and suggests that the Quality of Life (QoL) conceptual framework (Brown, Schalock, & Brown, 2009), having already expanded to include the individual to the family unit, be further extended to engage the community. To illustrate, we describe two community-based projects aimed at moving family involvement in special education away from a model of individual advocacy, situated within western ethnocentric organizational structures that rely on sociocultural capital, to grassroots collective activism.
The least restrictive environment (LRE) mandate of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Ac... more The least restrictive environment (LRE) mandate of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has long been questioned as to whether it has fulfilled the original intent of the law. This advocacy brief provides an updated analysis of the flaws underlying the principle of LRE, a mandate that exists at the nexus of cultural beliefs about disability, the influence of the medical model on special education, and the misguided link between intensity of services and more restrictive environments. We review the origins of LRE; summarize research on the positive relationship between placement in general education and student outcomes; describe six flaws of LRE's grounding in the continuum model of educational placement that sanctions segregation; present data that illustrate little progress over time towards general education placement for students with intellectual disability, and outline some key court rulings about what constitutes the least restrictive environment. In summary, w...
Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 2016
The TASH Inclusive Education National Committee responded to Horner and Dunlap’s call to ensure t... more The TASH Inclusive Education National Committee responded to Horner and Dunlap’s call to ensure that future research integrates inclusive values with strong science by developing an inclusive education national research advocacy agenda. Qualitative methods were implemented to answer three questions: (a) What is the state of inclusive education research? (b) What research still must be done? and (c) What are recommendations for a national inclusive education research advocacy agenda? The findings include 15 areas organized within three domains advocating for continued research across systems-level capacity building, building and classroom capacity, and student learning and development. Implications for research and policy reform are discussed.
We live in the Golden Age of the memoir. Everyone has a story to tell, and a growing number are f... more We live in the Golden Age of the memoir. Everyone has a story to tell, and a growing number are finding their way to publication. The disability memoir has certainly been a part of this growth. It is refreshing to note how many of these recent narrative accounts of living with a disability have been written from what might be broadly termed a “disability studies perspective” taking on a more critical, socio-cultural orientation than the traditional ‘inspiration in the face of personal tragedy’ motif. The list of such accounts is growing (a very short and incomplete list would include works by Anne Finger (2006), Simi Linton (2006), Harriet McBryde Johnson (2005), Eli Clare (1999), Rod Michalko (1998), and Stephen Kuusisto (1998). Beyond the personal memoir, there has been a similar explosion of memoirs written by family members of individuals with disabilities (parents, siblings, and children). However, unlike the personal memoir, relatively few of these “family narratives” have adopted a clear disability studies perspective...
It was a late winter afternoon when I sat in the small town Dairy Queen cafe across from Katie wh... more It was a late winter afternoon when I sat in the small town Dairy Queen cafe across from Katie while she ate a vanilla ice cream sundae. Katie, 17, was a high school senior student attending a special education program referred to as Life Skills. While researching the lived experiences of young people with significant disabilities, I sought to engage Katie in conversation about school and friends.
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