Educational Studies

The pedagogical practice of intergroup dialogue seems to me a simultaneously important and difficult endeavour. Syracuse University offers a number of courses dealing in a variety of subjects or "social identities" from gender to sexuality to race. However, at present there is no intergroup dialogue on ability/disability. As I began to consider why this might be, I realized it was necessary to first consider how such a project of dialogue across ability/disability would occur. What would be its goals? And, are there specific differences -limitations perhaps -in dialoguing across differences of ability? This essay attempts to respond to these background questions. It is therefore an exploration of "dialogue across difference" and the specific possibilities and limitations for a dialogue across differences of ability. I take as a starting point Alison Jones' critique of dialogue as an ideal of equality in critical pedagogy. In her example of dialogue across difference between a group of Maori and Pacific Islander students and their white counterpart we see difficult questions arise regarding knowledge, power, and experience, namely who emerge as knowers in this arrangement, who is empowered, and who actually benefits in relation to the aim of the project. These tensions trouble the aim of dialogue as generating mutual understanding, empowerment of marginalized groups, and, more broadly, equality.

The capabilities approach (CA) is celebrated as offering a framework for educational equality that is aimed at responding to existing social injustices. It is in the spirit of this corrective that CA promises to inform philosophical and policy discussions on the education of students with disabilities. Recent work in this area emphasizes the normalcy of disability in human life and the need to include disability in any consideration of overall well-being and equality. However, the view of disability as a natural part of human diversity stands in stark contrast to the prevailing negative social and cultural regard for disability as an abnormal or atypical condition. In this essay, I ask whether the attempt to normalize disability may overlook the way that disability is actually viewed: Does the effort to normalize disability underestimate the force of cultural constructions of normalcy and normal ability? I discuss the role of education in preparing young people for political participation in order to show how the unjust social context of this participation complicates how we attend to the "atypical" functionings of children with disabilities.

A growing body of work in feminist philosophy of disability, in particular, and philosophy of cognitive disability, more generally, demonstrates the discursive constitution of norms of intelligence and cognitive ability in order to undermine both the false assumptions about human ability and the gendered and racialized norms of rationality, independence, and competence that inform philosophical and bioethical theories about moral status. Many of these philosophical accounts of disability seem designed to -implicitly or explicitly-prove that, given some newlyvalued norms, certain persons do indeed have these capabilities, rather than to transform the social conditions that create such demarcations in the first place. In this paper, I argue that feminist philosophy of disability and moral philosophy more broadly would benefit if they were to consider the social conditions of possibility in which these qualifications for moral status arise, rather than continue to focus on the qualifications themselves. In order to argue in this way, I consider how assessments of moral status and human life simultaneously foreclose possible expressions of "lives worth living." I suggest, furthermore, that feminist philosophers of disability in particular and feminist philosophers in general would benefit if they were to consider the risks that this normative theorizing involves. In turn, I propose a way in which feminist philosophers ought to orient themselves in order to create the conditions of possibility for the emergence of divergent expressions of human wellbeing and moral potential.

The growing field of feminist disability studies explores how human bodies are interpreted through cultural values and expectations surrounding physical and mental ability. This paper contributes to and expands upon this conversation by examining how the ideal of “able-mindedness” functions to maintain racial divisions and inequalities through attributions of cognitive and psychiatric disability to bodies of color. Drawing upon contemporary examples from popular social media, public policy, and academic discourse, the author shows how racialized and nonnormatively gendered bodies are identified and interpreted through norms of able-mindedness and used as markers against which the ideal of the able mind is upheld. This “discourse of pathology” operates insidiously within academic theorizing by remaining largely invisible because it tracks our deeply ingrained assumptions about the undesirability of cognitive and psychiatric disability. The author argues that because of the entanglement of race with disability, so long as the normalizing and privileging of the ideal of able-mindedness goes unchallenged and we maintain the myth that there exists a normal mental state, both racism and ableism remain very much alive, including within the academy.

My disability is very visible, and therefore it is accompanied by many wonderful attitudes and assumptions about me: people wonder if I can love, have sex, compete philosophically, and succeed on my own. These assumptions I believe have lead [sic] to a degree of marginalization and social isolation which I struggle to free myself from. No doubt, my peculiar embodiment has led to a unique philosophical perspective on matters people rarely think about and it motivates me to do the philosophical work that I do. 1 Such is the ambivalence that attends the experience of being a disabled academic. On the one hand, this individual's very visible disability invites suspicion from colleagues about his capacity to perform (philosophically, socially, even sexually), a suspicion that betrays the pervasive prejudice towards people whose bodies do not conform to societal standards of normalcy and health. On the other hand, this man recognizes that his disability gives him a " unique " perspective from which to address issues in his field, enables him to reveal problems that are often ignored by or simply not on the radar of other philosophers, and motivates his desire to pursue these questions in his research. Disability is at once a liability and a resource. These attitudes of suspicion betray a pervasive skeptical stance towards disabled individuals' academic membership that undermines their ability to be included in communities of scholars. In fact, we might say that these attitudes disable. The marginalizing effects of able-bodied privilege prevail despite academic institutions' efforts to recognize and accommodate a growing number of students and faculty with disabilities. At the same time, as researchers argue that these growing numbers provide the rationale for postsecondary institutions to continue to expand services and opportunities for individuals with disabilities, they also urge these institutions to recognize that the substantive inclusion of individuals with disabilities demands examining how cultural and institutional norms are based on an assumption that all individuals are able-bodied. 2 This includes spaces of academic deliberation, which are often difficult for people with disabilities to physically access, navigate, or feel comfortable within because they are designed according to expectations of able-bodiedness. I argue that those of us who participate in these spaces have good reasons to be concerned about this problem, even if — and perhaps especially because — it does not directly impact our experience. The aim of this essay is to convince educational philosophers of these reasons and of their corresponding stake in transforming research practices, meeting environments, and scholarly pursuits to enact principles of inclusion. My argument is composed of three parts. First, I describe common institutional responses to disabled scholars in academia and explain that academic environments participate in locating disabilities as marginal and even threatening to academic pursuits. These institutional responses perpetuate able-bodied privilege and shape who has the opportunity to directly impact scholarly deliberations. Second, I explain why this tacit exclusion is a problem for academics who experience able-bod

"My disability is very visible, and therefore it is accompanied by many wonderful attitudes and assumptions about me: people wonder if I can love, have sex, compete philosophically, and succeed on my own. These assumptions I believe have lead [sic] to a degree of marginalization and social isolation which I struggle to free myself from. No doubt, my peculiar embodiment has led to a unique philosophical perspective on matters people rarely think about and it motivates me to do the philosophical work that I do." 1 Such is the ambivalence that attends the experience of being a disabled academic. On the one hand, this individual's very visible disability invites suspicion from colleagues about his capacity to perform (philosophically, socially, even sexually), a suspicion that betrays the pervasive prejudice towards people whose bodies do not conform to societal standards of normalcy and health. On the other hand, this man recognizes that his disability gives him a " unique " perspective from which to address issues in his field, enables him to reveal problems that are often ignored by or simply not on the radar of other philosophers, and motivates his desire to pursue these questions in his research. Disability is at once a liability and a resource. These attitudes of suspicion betray a pervasive skeptical stance towards disabled individuals' academic membership that undermines their ability to be included in communities of scholars. In fact, we might say that these attitudes disable. The marginalizing effects of able-bodied privilege prevail despite academic institutions' efforts to recognize and accommodate a growing number of students and faculty with disabilities. At the same time, as researchers argue that these growing numbers provide the rationale for postsecondary institutions to continue to expand services and opportunities for individuals with disabilities, they also urge these institutions to recognize that the substantive inclusion of individuals with disabilities demands examining how cultural and institutional norms are based on an assumption that all individuals are able-bodied. 2 This includes spaces of academic deliberation, which are often difficult for people with disabilities to physically access, navigate, or feel comfortable within because they are designed according to expectations of able-bodiedness. I argue that those of us who participate in these spaces have good reasons to be concerned about this problem, even if — and perhaps especially because — it does not directly impact our experience. The aim of this essay is to convince educational philosophers of these reasons and of their corresponding stake in transforming research practices, meeting environments, and scholarly pursuits to enact principles of inclusion. My argument is composed of three parts. First, I describe common institutional responses to disabled scholars in academia and explain that academic environments participate in locating disabilities as marginal and even threatening to academic pursuits. These institutional responses perpetuate able-bodied privilege and shape who has the opportunity to directly impact scholarly deliberations. Second, I explain why this tacit exclusion is a problem for academics who experience able-bod

Disability studies in education scholars have discussed the need to engage students, and certainly preservice teachers, in critical discussion of disability as a concept. To better understand what such critical discussion entails, Ashley Taylor examines the pedagogical implications of promoting an understanding of disability as a shared experience of being human. In particular, Taylor is concerned with how the appeal to a shared experience of disability (which she calls “the shared reality view”) might contribute to or impede students' development of critical attitudes toward ableist social and educational practices. She describes two chief limitations of the shared reality view and argues that these complicate efforts to teach about disability in ways that avoid reinforcing students' existing beliefs. Taylor concludes by offering a pedagogical framework that retains valuable aspects of the shared reality view while avoiding its limitations.

The educational aims described by educational philosophers rarely embrace the full range of differences in intellectual ability, adaptive behavior, or communication that children exhibit. Because envisioned educational aims have significant consequences for how educational practices, pedagogy, and curricula are conceptualized, the failure to acknowledge and embrace differences in ability leaves open the question of the extent to which students with intellectual disabilities are subject to the same aims as their ‘‘typically-developing’’ peers. In articulating and defending valued aims of education, educational philosophers tacitly or expressly concede that particular aims will be ill suited to many children with intellectual disabilities, and that separate aims will therefore apply to them.This paper evaluates the philosophical reasoning behind this conclusion that some people,by necessity, must be governed by separate educational aims, to be decided separately and secondarily. The author calls this the ‘‘deferral stance.’’ First, the paper outlines concerns about a particular ability-biased social and epistemic context in which theorizing about educational aims takes place. The author then examines assumptions that underpin the logic of deferral, arguing that the logic proves flawed when subjected to conceptual and empirical scrutiny. The paper concludes by outlining an inclusive approach—the affir-mative stance—to theorizing about educational aims that resists the logic of exclusion and deferral

Intellectual disability may appear to many as a barrier to participation in or the production of educational research. Indeed, a common perception of individuals seen as having cognitive impairments, and especially those with minimal or no verbal communication, is that they are incapable of the reasoning or lack the deliberative capacities necessary to participate in research or policy-influencing decision making. In this essay, Ashley Taylor dismantles these assumptions, challenging both the view of intellectual disability on which they rest and the view of epistemic competence they imply. Taylor shows how the absence or exclusion of people with intellectual disabilities labels from dominant knowledge-making institutions and arenas, including within educational research, amounts to injustice and results in their tacit or overt exclusion from civic education and political membership.

This article argues that there is incomplete acknowledgment of the historically racist and ableist meaning of merit in the promotion of higher education equity. Consequently, a masquerade of merit positions mechanisms of standardizationincluding physical environment, classroom norms, and co-curricular activities in addition to admissions criteria as seemingly neutral practices in the academy because they construct able-bodiedness/mindedness as naturally occurring and empirically measurable. Thus, merit-based decisions are afforded the status of simply making sense. Individuals are understood to succeed because of their natural talents and hard work, rather than because they resemble the normed archetype of higher education fitness. We call this the logic of bio-meritocracy, and argue that it operates pervasively, yet paradoxically, within systems of higher education. The continual marginalization of individuals labeled with disabilities within the academy is therefore not arbitrary, unintended, or accidental, but rather tied to the maintenance of able-bodied/minded supremacy.

This paper explores the productive aspects and tensions that arise in the design, planning, and implementation of what were once teacher preparation courses in education that the authors revised to focus on self- advocacy, disability rights, and disabled citizenship through “subversively inclusive” pedagogy. We name these classes “subversively inclusive” because they enroll a mix of traditionally enrolled students and students labelled with intellectual and developmental disability (IDD). The courses were taught by the authors at two different institutions of higher education in the Northeast of the United States. The expressed purposes for the authors in teaching these courses were to: a) to provide opportunity for students labeled with IDD to study disability rights-oriented curricula in an inclusive higher education setting; and b) to enact the goal of orienting professional preparation in teaching toward partnership with people labeled with IDD. In this paper, we use a disability studies perspective in order to reflect on ethical issues, points of productivity, and struggles we encountered while teaching these courses, which included making curricular choices, making pedagogical choices, issues of identity and language, and encountering multiple perspectives on the purpose and benefits of the courses for students. We conclude by providing recommendations for other disability studies scholars interested in attempting to teach similar courses.