Making inclusion matter: critical disability studies and teacher education

Abstract

This paper explores the affordances of critical disability studies (CDS) for curricular theorizing in teacher education for inclusion and socially just pedagogy. Specifically attending to the posthumanist thread within this field, I offer provocations to three tenets that undergird a disability studies informed teacher education curriculum for inclusion, and which are also salient within the larger field of teacher education. These tenets include the critique of schools, exhortations to act agentively towards change, and the foundational premise of a narrative understanding of experience. I argue for a recognition of the ontological inseparability of schools, teachers and teacher educator-scholars that can move us towards a more ‘affirmative critique’. I assert the significance of affect as a compelling force in not only how teachers experience inclusion and inclusive teaching, but also for how teacher educators mobilize themselves towards this project. I question the presumed disembodied ‘freedom’ attached to conceptions of inclusive teachers and teacher educators. And, finally, I deploy dishumanism to extend an understanding of narrative that can both affirm teachers’ role as agents while simultaneously recognizing their embeddedness in material-discursive assemblages.