Owen Barden

Liverpool Hope University, Education, Faculty Member

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I am interested in literacy, and particularly the potential for digital media and the concepts associated with multiliteracies to unsettle dominant deficit models of dyslexia.

I teach SEN elements of the Hope Education Studies programme

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University of Dundee

Cankaya University

Chloe Brownlee-Chapman

viv golding

University of Leicester

Teresa Macchia

University of Trento

Patrícia Roque Martins

Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas - Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Hélia Filipe Saraiva

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Papers by Owen Barden

Antonia's Story: Bringing the past into the future

by Owen Barden and Steven J. Walden

British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 2022

• This is a paper about how we researched learning disability history together. • We used materia... more • This is a paper about how we researched learning disability history together. • We used material in a digital archive as well as creative methods to do our research. • Working this way helped us learn about ourselves, and each other's experiences of learning disability, whilst we learned about the history. • This is important because people with learning disabilities have not often been able to do historical research. • Research like this matters because doing it teaches us useful skills and can be empowering.

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Disability, Avoidance and the Academy

Disability, Avoidance and the Academy, 2015

A review of the the book Disability, Avoidance and the Academy.

Including adult learners from diverse cultural backgrounds

Disability and Social Inclusion: Lessons From the Pandemic

Social Inclusion

The coronavirus pandemic necessitated rapid, radical changes to global systems, structures, and o... more The coronavirus pandemic necessitated rapid, radical changes to global systems, structures, and organisations across all areas of life, including education, healthcare, and social services. These changes were something of a double‐edged sword. On the one hand, widespread adoption of the kinds of remote‐working technologies long advocated for by disabled people opened up possibilities for inclusion. On the other, some people’s inability to access such technologies, together with increased social isolation, exacerbated forms of exclusion. This thematic issue considers what lessons can be learned from the pandemic in striving to design a future which is more inclusive for all. In this editorial, we provide a brief overview of some of the major challenges the pandemic created for disabled people, who were disproportionately negatively affected by it. We also suggest that a disability rights lens is a useful way of highlighting both the contingency of disability and the need for more res...

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Crip Times. Disability, Globalisation, and Resistance by Robert McRuer (review)

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2018

A Cultural History of Learning Difficulties in the Modern Age

Bloomsbury eBooks, 2019

My thesis in this chapter is threefold. Firstly, I contend that “Learning Difficulties” as we now... more My thesis in this chapter is threefold. Firstly, I contend that “Learning Difficulties” as we now understand them are a phenomenon created by certain contingent discursive formations. That is to say that they are not natural, but manufactured, and dependent on particular, peculiar historical conditions. Secondly, that “Learning Difficulties” is an organizing concept: one which has, over the course of the 20th and 21st-centuries, irrespective of the shifting signifying terminology used over this period, radically transformed our sense not only of education and learning, but also of who is or is not deemed entitled to full citizenship and the associated rights, and so who is or is not fully human. Thirdly, that a regime of truth has been constructed around “Learning Difficulties” which privileges certain knowledges and excludes alternative ways of knowing, most notably those of people labelled with Learning Difficulties.

Avoiding new literacies : ideology, dyslexia, and perceived deficits

This chapter elaborates Bolt's (2012) concept of critical avoidance through reference to Bria... more This chapter elaborates Bolt's (2012) concept of critical avoidance through reference to Brian Street's seminal ideological model of literacy (Street, 1984). According to Bolt, critical avoidance occurs when avoidance of disability is replicated at the curricular level, and results in a general lack of informed engagement with disability as well as the perpetuation of tropes and stereotypes associated with impairment. I suggest that critical avoidance is manifest when students labelled as dyslexic are subjected to normalising pedagogies away from the mainstream class and curriculum, and consequently discursively represented as literacy 'strugglers' or 'failures' with Special Educational Needs. Such remedial pedagogies are predicated on the idea of encouraging independence in and through normative literacy skill development. In setting out his ideological model of literacy, Street (1984) critiqued the fallacy inherent in conceptualising literacy simply as a se...

Including Learners from Diverse Cultural Backgrounds

Imagine fluently speaking two languages, but not English, and having two degrees from Cairo Unive... more Imagine fluently speaking two languages, but not English, and having two degrees from Cairo University, and then having to retrain in a new language – English. This is the example of a teacher from Egypt, a Coptic Christian, who managed to immigrate to Australia just before the Arab Spring political uprising in January 2011. Coptic Christians faced discrimination and violent clashes. Her husband came to Australia on a skilled immigrant visa. E’s qualifications were not recognised in Australia, so she had to retrain. E’s story is but one of a number from Australian and British adult students we obtained by interview, and which we report in this chapter. In relaying these students' voices, we attempt to re-emphasise the importance of mentors, coaches and tutors understanding the principles underpinning inclusiveness. This chapter looks at cultural aspects of inclusive education. Whereas 'inclusion' is often taken only to refer to disabled students or those deemed to have &...

Learning Difficulties

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2021

The paper focuses of the major problems related to the development of the system for analytical a... more The paper focuses of the major problems related to the development of the system for analytical accounting of import and export transactions and its effective functioning in the contemporary conditions. A special attention has been paid to the directions for introducing improvements in the organization of processes of generation and use of analytical accounting information for the import and export operations of the enterprise. The import and export of goods belong to the group of the so-called traditional foreign trade transactions, which comprise a basic unit within the system of contemporary international economic relations. As an object of accounting, import and export transactions are characterized by considerable complexity. It derives from their essential characteristics, which substantially distinguish them from commercial transactions within the domestic market in the country. Taking into account the specificities of import and export transactions, we can characterize them as complex business processes involving numerous and diverse business operations that have to be reflected in accounting. The main accounting objects in the context of import and export transactions can also be identified as primary objects of management in the enterprise carrying out such transactions. This puts an important requirement in accounting for providing, interpreting, using and delivering complete, comprehensive, reliable and timely information about them. The complexity and specificity of import and export transactions entails a need for greater analyticity in their accounting for better information support needed for their management. An issue of utmost importance in the generation of accounting information for the import and export transactions is the rational development of the structure of the system for analytical accounting in accordance with the specific information needs of the enterprise related to the analysis and overall management of these operations. A major problem in this regard is to ensure organizational and methodological unity between the generation of analytical accounting information for the import and export of goods and the subsequent detailed analyzes in different perspectives. For this purpose, it is necessary to organize the accounting based on analytical indicators, which correspond to the specific directions for detailing the analyzes of import and export transactions. It is also mandatory for the organization of the system for analytical accounting to be complied with the important requirement that the benefits of the information should exceed the expenses made for its generation. This presupposes the achievement of an effective organization aided by modern accounting software, and as early as upon initial entry of the data in the accounting information system based on the primary accounting documents for the completed transactions the information needs of analysis should also be taken into consideration. Thus, a one-off entry and multiple use of the detailed accounting information on import and export will be ensured, the doubling of expenses for labor and time will be avoided in relation to the generation of accounting information and its subsequent use for the purposes of analysis.

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Learning Difficulties: A Cultural History of Learning Difficulties in the Modern Age

A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age, 2020

Antonia's story: Bringing the past into the future

British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 2022

Avoiding new literacies

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Dysrationalia

Changing Social Attitudes Toward Disability, 2014

Contemporaneously with the publication of Lennard Davis’s Enforcing Normalcy in 1995, Keith Stano... more Contemporaneously with the publication of Lennard Davis’s Enforcing Normalcy in 1995, Keith Stanovich, an eminent Canadian psychologist, was questioning the conceptual foundations of learning disabilities. To illustrate his critique he invented a new learning disability that he called dysrationalia (Stanovich, 1993). Around the same time, Peter Senge's seminal management book The Fifth Discipline was encouraging people to credit organisations with the ability to learn and even to have learning disabilities (Senge, 1990). True to the interdisciplinary ethos of Disability Studies, in this chapter I draw on current and historical perspectives from discourses including philosophy, critical and cognitive psychology, and organisation management to ask if dysrationalia can help to explain social attitudes toward disability as they occur within organisations.

Disability and Disciplines, Liverpool Hope University

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2016

“Oh my, what a gathering!” commented one observer upon seeing photographs of the Disability and D... more “Oh my, what a gathering!” commented one observer upon seeing photographs of the Disability and Disciplines Conference published on Facebook. Another spoke of “Disability Studies royalty all in one room.” Although the scholars concerned would no doubt balk at such a description, this conference— organized by David Bolt, Claire Penketh, Heidi Mapley, and other core members of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, 1 and 2 July 2015— truly was a remarkable event. Almost sixty papers in eighteen panels, as well as three keynotes, were presented over the two days, and of course much of the conference’s strength lay in its diversity. The theme of Disability and Disciplines enabled presenters to engage with an extensive range of topics, held together by a thread of criticality drawn from David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder’s The Biopolitics of Disability that questioned the limits of inclusion through embodied pedagogies. The keynotes were of course fantastic. Julie Allan closed the first day with an erudite, impassioned plea for better recognition and appreciation for the role of art and “serious play” as ways of learning about and through disability, aesthetics, and ethics. On day two, Peter Beresford delivered a strong critique of the narrative of “recovery” which permeates discourses of psychiatry and mental health, arguing for greater acknowledgement of other models of mental health and living. Delegates’ tweets about Beresford’s paper were credited with boosting interest in Mad Studies. David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder closed the conference by screening a short film made by their George Washington University undergraduates about a visit to Germany, illustrating the powerful learning about contemporary marginalization engendered through tangible experience of international disability history and eugenics. There were many other highlights—far too many for any one person to keep track of. With this in mind—and inspired by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Georgina Kleege’s plenary panel, where digital technologies were used to help the audience engage with, and contribute to, the presentations—this Comment

Getting inside histories of learning disabilities

Educational Action Research, 2021

ABSTRACT This paper reports on the novel methodology used in a participatory project called ‘Insi... more ABSTRACT This paper reports on the novel methodology used in a participatory project called ‘Inside the History of Learning Disabilities.’ Through engaging learning-disabled people as co-researchers with valuable insider knowledge and expertise to share, the project sought to disrupt hegemonic discourses around both the history of ’learning disabilities’, and of the lived experience of learning disabilities today. The overall objective was to make an important contribution to the growing field of interdisciplinary and emancipatory research about learning disabilities. The year-long project used a bespoke, two-step methodology in addressing this objective, combining archival research with a series of participatory focused workshops. Traditional methods and academic expertise in archival research and textual analysis were combined with less orthodox approaches to elicit insider knowledge about learning disabilities, which was then expressed in a range of ways. These expressions provide preliminary indications of how emancipatory and transformational research aims may be met. The paper makes a contribution to the discourse around new and emerging action research methodologies which seek to promote social justice. It describes away to not only recognise and challenge the oppression and exclusion encountered by disabled people, but to advocate for appreciation of disability and the insider-knowledge learning-disabled people have.

Dyslexics "knowing how" to challenge "lexism

Lexism (Collinson, 2012, 2014) is alternative conceptualisation of what defines dyslexics. Much a... more Lexism (Collinson, 2012, 2014) is alternative conceptualisation of what defines dyslexics. Much as ableism and racism entail prejudice against specific culturally constructed groups, lexism is the Othering of, and discrimination against, dyslexics. Lexism is the result of normative attitudes and beliefs of literacy – that literacy should only be ‘done’ a certain way. We use the new concept of lexism to reassess some assumptions around literacy and dyslexia, and then to examine the way social media can act as enabling technologies which unsettle these normative assumptions.

The Voice of Disability, Seminar Series, Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University

Held at the Merseyside Maritime Museum on 13 October 2015, this conference brought together recen... more Held at the Merseyside Maritime Museum on 13 October 2015, this conference brought together recent research, policy, and practice to discuss the latest developments in challenging hate crime. Organized by the International Criminological Research Unit (ICRU) at the University of Liverpool, in partnership with Merseyside Police and Moving On with Life and Learning (MOWLL), the importance of "partnership" echoed throughout the day. The transdisciplinary nature of the conference invited speakers from a range of fields to explore the impact of hate crime for the communities too often placed at the centre of victimology. The wide range of speakers included activists, academics, and practitioners representing disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. While recognizing the unique cases of hate crime for these different communities, the idea of collaboration was central to developing future debates that could continue to challenge all aspects of hate crime.Introducing the day's keynotes, Professor David Ormerod employed a political interpretation of hate crime. In relation to the project assigned to the Law of Commissions by the Ministry of Justice, he provided a brief outline of the Commissions response for the development of hate crime legislation. The primary concern underpinning this project was the need to extend the categories of "aggravated offences" and "stirring up hatred" so that they applied to all five protected characteristics. In a politically informed exploration of the conceptual tensions underpinning hate crime legislation, Professor Ormerod concluded by giving the final recommendation of the Commission not to extend the current offences. Although justified on the basis that such offences lacked relevance to the forms of hate crime most often experienced by both lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), and disabled communities, this conclusion generated a varied response among the academics, activists, and professionals in the room. While I recognized the political complexity that legislative change entails, this conclusion left me pondering the political "misinterpretation" of a human rights agenda that continued a system of legislative discrepancy. Moreover, I could not help feeling pessimistic about the political developments aiming to challenge hate crime. If disabled and LGBT communities are not given equal status and protection in legislation, I wonder how they might gain this in a society that has historically nurtured a rejection of difference.Centred on a "public health" approach to the problem of hate crime, Professor Paul Iganski invited us to move away from the criminological focus of "reporting" crime toward a global perspective on both the spatial and psycho-social consequences. The psycho-social approach extended my own interpretation of victimization, and led me to focus not only on the instant physical and emotional effects of hate crime but also on those of post-traumatic stress, identity, and visibility. Perhaps of greater impact, however, Professor Iganski reaffirmed the spatial impact of hate crime, such as the sense of "locational imprisonment," whereby many communities feel restricted and have to avoid certain areas that threaten their identity. The unsettling severity of a "global problem" questions the cultural and social conditions in which hate crime is nested, probing the need for preventative measures on both individual and community levels. Professor Iganski's attempt to move toward a public health approach therefore encouraged a model of resistance and prevention predicated upon a communitive challenge to hate crime.These keynotes introduced the conference to hate crime in relation to race, religion, gender identity, and sexual orientation. However, my main reflections here are on the work of Professor Alan Roulstone regarding disablist hate crime.1Professor Roulstone introduced the conference to many of the issues faced when challenging disablist hate crime. …

The metanarrative of learning disability

Researching New Literacies. Design, Theory and Data in Sociocultural Investigation. Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear (Eds). (2017) Peter Lang. ISBN: 978‐1‐4331‐3145‐5, £44.00 (paperback)

Literacy, 2018

Literacy Special Issue Call for Papers: Literacies and Disability

Literacy, 2019

Antonia's Story: Bringing the past into the future

by Owen Barden and Steven J. Walden

British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 2022

Download

Disability, Avoidance and the Academy

Disability, Avoidance and the Academy, 2015

A review of the the book Disability, Avoidance and the Academy.

Including adult learners from diverse cultural backgrounds

Disability and Social Inclusion: Lessons From the Pandemic

Social Inclusion

Download

Crip Times. Disability, Globalisation, and Resistance by Robert McRuer (review)

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2018

A Cultural History of Learning Difficulties in the Modern Age

Bloomsbury eBooks, 2019

Avoiding new literacies : ideology, dyslexia, and perceived deficits

Including Learners from Diverse Cultural Backgrounds

Learning Difficulties

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2021

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Learning Difficulties: A Cultural History of Learning Difficulties in the Modern Age

A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age, 2020

Antonia's story: Bringing the past into the future

British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 2022

Avoiding new literacies

Download

Dysrationalia

Changing Social Attitudes Toward Disability, 2014

Disability and Disciplines, Liverpool Hope University

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2016

Getting inside histories of learning disabilities

Educational Action Research, 2021

Dyslexics "knowing how" to challenge "lexism

The Voice of Disability, Seminar Series, Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University

The metanarrative of learning disability

Researching New Literacies. Design, Theory and Data in Sociocultural Investigation. Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear (Eds). (2017) Peter Lang. ISBN: 978‐1‐4331‐3145‐5, £44.00 (paperback)

Literacy, 2018

Literacy Special Issue Call for Papers: Literacies and Disability

Literacy, 2019

Disability, Avoidance and the Academy: Challenging Resistance

by Claire Penketh, Professor David Bolt, Joel Petrie, Laura Waite, Owen Barden, Rita Hoffmann, Peter Beresford, Arianna Introna, Maria Flamich, and Robert Cluley

Disability is a widespread phenomenon, indeed a potentially universal one as life expectancies ri... more Disability is a widespread phenomenon, indeed a potentially universal one as life expectancies rise. Within the academic world, it has relevance for all disciplines yet is often dismissed as a niche market or someone else’s domain. This collection explores how academic avoidance of disability studies and disability theory is indicative of social prejudice and highlights, conversely, how the academy can and does engage with disability studies.

This innovative book brings together work in the humanities and the social sciences, and draws on the riches of cultural diversity to challenge institutional and disciplinary avoidance. Divided into three parts, the first looks at how educational institutions and systems implicitly uphold double standards, which can result in negative experiences for staff and students who are disabled. The second part explores how disability studies informs and improves a number of academic disciplines, from social work to performance arts. The final part shows how more diverse cultural engagement offers a way forward for the academy, demonstrating ways in which we can make more explicit the interdisciplinary significance of disability studies – and, by extension, disability theory, activism, experience, and culture.

Disability, Avoidance and the Academy: Challenging Resistance will interest students and scholars of disability studies, education studies and cultural studies.

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Demanding Money with Menaces: Fear and Loathing in the Archipelago of Confinement

by Professor David Bolt and Owen Barden

Time: 2.00pm-3.30pm Place: EDEN Arbour Room, Liverpool Hope University, UK

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Disability and the Emotions 2017/18

by Professor David Bolt, Gesine Wegner, Ugo Pavan Dalla Torre, Lennard Davis, Brady J Forrest, and Owen Barden

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Owen Barden

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