Presuming Competence

Abstract

At least since the early 1990s, educators in inclusive schooling as well as scholars in Disability Studies have critiqued prevailing notions of intellectual ability and have suggested the importance of interpretive communities for constructing student competence (Biklen, 1990 Biklen, D. 1990. Communication unbound: Autism and praxis. Harvard Educational Review, 60(3): 291–314. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Goode, 1992 Goode, D. A. 1992. “Who is Bobby? Ideology and method in the discovery of a Down syndrome person's competence”. In Interpreting disability: A qualitative reader, Edited by: Ferguson, P. M., Ferguson, D. L. and Taylor, S. J. 197–212. New York: Teachers College Press. [Google Scholar], 1994 Goode, D. A. 1994. World without words: The social construction of children born deaf and blind, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. [Google Scholar]; Kliewer, 1998 Kliewer, C. 1998. Schooling children with Down syndrome: Toward an understanding of possiblity, New York: Teachers College Press. [Google Scholar]; Kluth, 2003 Kluth, P. 2003. “You're going to love this kid.” Teaching students with autism in the inclusive classroom, Baltimore: Brookes. [Google Scholar]; Linneman, 2001 Linneman, R. D. 2001. Idiots: Stories about mindedness and mental retardation, New York: Lang. [Google Scholar]). This work follows in the tradition of education-as-dialogue, which some have argued is a sine qua non for conceptualizing education with individuals who have been traditionally marginalized (see for example, Ashton-Warner, 1963 Ashton-Warner, S. 1963. Teacher, New York: Simon & Schuster. [Google Scholar], Freire, 1970 Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the oppressed, New York: Herder and Herder. [Google Scholar]). The core of this article is a conversation between a university educator and a high school student with autism who types to communicate. Out of this essay, the authors find a series of principles for inclusive schooling, the most central of which is the idea of presuming competence of students.