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Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a very common physical head injury that happens in an instant. These injuries can inaugurate a wide range of long-term impairments that vary widely between those that survive them. Using a blend of social scientific and contemporary Disability Studies theory, this paper traces how moderate-to-severe TBIs become disabilities through the daily lives and interactions of survivors, those closest to them, and their wider communities. The complex, shifting, and contextually dependent nature of what they term life 'with TBI' muddies and multiplies the acronym's original construction as a simple and knowable injury. The resulting confusion inaugurates a feedback loop between survivors' bodies and socialities that ultimately constitutes the injury as a complexly embodied disability. This process helps to productively expand the definition of disability to include other more complex and invisible conditions like TBI. This research studies a distinct kind of disability ("Traumatic Brain Injury") from a social perspective that has rarely been investigated. Disabilities like Traumatic Brain Injury affect and are changed by the social contexts, lives, and interactions of the disabled with those around them. Those that survive Traumatic Brain Injuries may not share any bodily or mental impairments, but they embody and perform the same disability. Traumatic Brain Injury is different across the individual, social, and political levels. This paper presents how those who may not fit within traditional definitions of disability can still be disabled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, disability studies have ignored the experiences of people who migrate, while migration studies frequently excluded disabled people. This is a surprising omission from both fields of study given that many disabled people are migrants, and many migrants are disabled people. There is a clear lack of knowledge about disabled people among migrant populations. Most, if not all, studies in this area focus on disabled people among forced migrant populations; this paper focuses on voluntary migrants from the EU living in the UK during the Brexit transition period. We report findings that are part of a larger qualitative study conducted in 2018–2019 in the north of England. This paper is based on four in-depth interviews with disabled EU migrants and three key informant interviews with representatives from organisations that work with migrant and disabled people. The research findings indicate that disabled EU migrants in the context of Brexit represent some of the most invisible and vulnerable people in the contemporary UK. The contradicting stereotypical perceptions of cheap physical migrant labour (highly classed issue) and disability linked to economic unproductivity, lead to the invisibility of disabled migrants in theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Charlie Haden's Earplugs" explores how tinnitus, hyperacusis and misophonia have shaped the musicality and sonic production of the jazz bassist and composer. While Haden maintained a negative attitude toward his hearing damage over the course of his long musical career, viewing it as a limitation and a source of difficulty, this paper brings together evidence to suggest that Haden's condition also provided him a productive means to exert control over his sonic reality. In this way, these maligned conditions are part and parcel of Haden's personal engagement with the world, and therefore, part of his creative process and distinct aesthetic. This analysis is accomplished by a forensic account of Haden's listening particularities through his interviews, as well an analysis of his approach as an improvising partner. This paper also draws from extant models of disability studies to explore the concept of "deaf-gain" and how it may be transposed to the disorders from which Haden suffered. There are to-date many well-established accounts of the deaf experience in disability studies and in music scholarship. This paper offers insight to another cluster of hearing dysfunction, which not only suggests a new paradigm for imagining disability in music, but also revises the very concept of hearing as it is commonly understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical youth studies understands contemporary youth transitions as an interplay between long term changes in labour markets and state approaches to welfare and the regulatory presence of societal norms about the 'right kind' of transitions and the 'right kind' of young adult citizens. This work is intersectional, with emphasis given to class, gender and race and ethnicity. However, in comparison less focus is given to disability, even though it shapes youth transition possibilities. This paper highlights the problems created by paying insufficient attention to disability, alongside making the case that there are conceptual tools useful to critical youth studies within disability studies. (1) Disability studies approaches to inequality help make the case that material inequalities are still an important factor in young people's lives. (2) A focus on disability supports arguments that as forms of state support dwindle, family is increasingly significant – and problematic – as a resource in youth transitions. (3) Critical disability studies can help explore the significance of normative embodied markers of transitions for young people making their way towards adulthood. (4) Collaboration can encourage deeper recognition of the relational quality of transitional processes and move away from a linear understanding of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the potential for material culture studies within the history of disability is explored through a study of preserved anatomical votives from medieval Norway left in connection with miraculous healing practices. The Norwegian votives, which include wooden body parts of hands, arms, finger, feet and legs as well as mobility aids, are here related to the lived experience of the physically impaired. Anatomical votives have been interpreted as meaningful depictions of how an individual conceptualised the body part in question, which they sought healing for. Through a posthumanist approach, anatomical votives can, however, not only be seen as solely representational of a body part but as material extensions of the body. Preserved mobility aids, here identified as hand-trestles and a knee-brace, provide insight into the availability of aids for individuals with lower limb impairments in the medieval North. The study of the material culture of disability can elucidate cultural notions of disability in relation to physical impairment. While written miracle accounts have been identified as important sources for the study of medieval disability, their associated material culture is here presented as important data for the embodied experience of the physically impaired in medieval Norway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One central aim of disability studies is to shift understandings of disability, such that disability comes to be understood as about the social disadvantage/oppression that people face when society does not cater to impairment of body/mind. Nevertheless, there remains a need for more practical tools for disability advocacy, through which to transmit disability studies' ideas of disability to the general community. Drawing on a qualitative study of the perspectives of 23 people with physical and sensory impairments, this paper proposes virtual reality as an advocacy tool to communicate the principles and beliefs of disability studies. The findings highlight that, due to the nature of the technology, participants feel virtual reality has clear potential as a disability advocacy tool that can facilitate empathy, perspective-taking and positive social change, with a particular focus on how it is the environmental barriers and social attitudes around people that disables them. More practical advocacy or informal education tools are needed that align with the principles of disability studies. This research conducted in-depth interviews with 23 people with physical and sensory impairments. The research finds that virtual reality has clear potential as a disability advocacy tool. The participants reported that virtual reality can facilitate empathy, perspective-taking and positive social change. The research finds that virtual reality focuses on how environmental barriers and social attitudes around people with disability disable them, rather than focusing on impairment experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a theory of text on-screen as "unvoiceover." It addresses both the case for captioning as social good and the affordances (aesthetic, affective) of writing in or over the moving image. Advancing an argument informed by perspectives from d/Deaf Studies, Critical Disability Studies and Digital Interface Studies, and applying modes of analysis from literary criticism alongside those proper to the study of moving image and sound, it examines the idiosyncrasies of text-in-motion as non-sonorous, fugitive counterpart to the traditional, troublesome "voiceover." To develop a poetics of the unsounding voice on-screen, the paper focalizes its argument through multimedia artist Liza Sylvestre's Captioned series: a body of moving image work that is itself, paradoxically, uncaptioned. Framing Sylvestre's lyrical "unvoiceover" as a reimagining of the lost roles of film explainers and literary intertitles, I argue that the artist's takeover of the caption track intervenes critically in contemporary debates about the ethics of audio-visual translation, situated description and access as public ethos rather than private concern. Posing the artist's personal-and-political writing as suggestive of a lower-case analogue to Deaf Gain, I show how Sylvestre's "unvoiceover" educates its "receivers" in the purpose and functioning of captions. By reading Sylvestre's writing on-screen more closely than its fugitive form seems to invite, I show how the unvoiceover encultures its own demands on its readers and elicits its own habits of reading. By scrutinizing how Sylvestre's series makes the case for captioning, this paper makes the case for a new appraisal of the aesthetic, affective and political affordances of the unvoiceover as writing on the run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is crucial for engineers to anticipate the socio-ethical impacts of emerging technologies. Such acts of anticipation are thoroughly normative and should be cultivated in engineering ethics education. In this paper we ask: 'how do we anticipate the socio-ethical implications of emerging technologies responsibly?' And 'how can such responsible anticipation be taught?' We offer a conceptual answer, building upon the framework of Responsible Innovation and its four core practices: anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion, and responsiveness. We forge a more explicit link between the practices of anticipation, reflexivity, and inclusion, while also enriching them with insights from disability studies, STS, design theory, and philosophy. On this basis we present responsible anticipation as an activity of reflective problem framing grounded in epistemic humility. Via the RI-practice of responsiveness we present responsible anticipation as a creative approach to engineering ethics, offering engineering students a critical yet productive perspective on how ethics may inform innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical occupational therapists have exhorted their profession to engage with disability studies' scholarship, curtail occupational therapy's promotion of ableism and amend its disabling practices. These appeals have largely been ignored despite their importance for a profession that researches, theorizes, assesses, and intervenes in the lives of disabled people. To interrogate occupational therapy's collusion with an ableist neoliberal agenda; and call for occupational therapists to resist their profession's disabling practices. This paper draws from critical disability scholarship to expose, critique and contest the ableist ideology underpinning occupational therapy. Interlinked with racism, heteronormativity and gender binarism, ableism upholds certain bodies as normal and appropriate. Ableist values shape occupational therapy, with clients classified according to their proximity to 'normality', and exhorted to minimize their occupational performance deviations from dominant norms. Collusion with colonialism's binary classificatory systems and neoliberal ableist norms, and avowed aspirations to improve bodies, 'normalize' performances, promote individualism, self-reliance, independence, self-care, and productivity contribute to the perception that ours is a disabling profession. This paper calls for occupational therapists to resist their profession's promotion of ableism, and refuse to collude with colonial practices that contribute to the oppression of disabled people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the territory's sole public service broadcaster and a government department, Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) bears a dual responsibility for disseminating information to the public and in assisting in constructing how the public understands emerging issues and marginalized social groups. This paper analyzes how neurodivergent individuals are (re)presented in A Wall-less World, RTHK's decade-long television series dedicated to promoting social inclusiveness. We find that by using different filming genres, plots, and narratives, the series exposes and negotiates different understandings about disability and perspectives about the lived experience of neurodivergent individuals. Given RTHK's unique position in the industry, and more generally in Hong Kong, we argue that the series perform a social service function to inform their viewers by engaging and shaping the public discourse gradually towards the neurodiversity paradigm. We also suggest future directions for practitioners and researchers to continue to engage and advocate for the neurodivergent community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the general subject of the representation of disabled people. The purpose is to show why disabled people need to speak for themselves, how they can work with other organisations, and how disabled people's organisations are, and can remain, truly representative. The paper discusses: (1) the representation of disabled people; (2) how do disability groups relate to able-bodied organisations, policy-makers, etc?; and (3) how can disabled people's groups remain truly representative? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The self-reported experiences of autistic individuals invite ways of thinking about moral character and moral formation that challenge Christians to rethink a number of traditional claims regarding the virtues. This paper argues that attention to autism requires rethinking accounts of growth in virtue that depend on normative views of social interactions such as friendship. Drawing on scholarship in disability studies and testimony from autistic participants in an IRB-supported research study, I contend that the phenomenon of "misfitting" put forth in the work of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (2011) plays a constructive and essential role in shaping virtuous character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In inclusive education, Disability Studies is a framework that has been useful for identifying gaps in theory, in practice and the spaces in between. Disability Studies in Education also provides new spaces in which to manoeuvre, re-framing theory, reflecting on and (potentially) shifting practice in classrooms, schools, and national policies and guidelines. In this paper three teacher educators and a school principal describe their work in undergraduate and graduate teacher education, both initial teacher education and in-service professional development. We describe the genesis of our theorising in an ongoing project developing and disseminating a sociocultural approach to assessment, Narrative Assessment. We continue to learn about curriculum, pedagogy and assessment in this project. These learnings inform our theory and practice of teacher education for inclusive education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with the issue of teacher education for inclusion and particularly with the approach of employing disability arts and narratives of people with disabilities in university based courses for inclusion. It draws on three examples of anti-oppressive curricula that were developed as part of a graduate university module in Cyprus that encouraged student teachers to engage with disability arts and narratives in order to understand key ideas developed in disability studies and inclusive education. The three examples presented in this paper are representative of the three approaches all the participating student teachers followed, and indicate the strategies they used and the nature of the materials they chose. The discussion considers how these approaches can further inform teacher education for inclusion and how using disability arts and narratives can inform the discussion on other issues concerning teacher education of inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper treats blindness as itself a performance. It understands it as movement, as essentially a kinaesthetic phenomenon. Touch, of course, becomes an exaggerated cogent sense for those of us who are blind. This is not only cogent, but a conventional understanding of blindness. This paper, in contrast, makes use of touch in an almost reverse way; it explores how those who see come in touch with, come to touch and are touched by blindness. Through invoking my own experiences as a blind woman and my movement in public spaces, I address the cogency, hyperbolic, valued sense of touch that is essential in performing blindness – in how my movement through the world comes to be 'seen' as the movement of a blind person, as blindness. This, I treat, as performance. I also treat myself, the blind person, as performer and the others, the others who see, as the audience. This audience is not passive; it is not merely a congregate of spectators. Instead, it is invested in blindness insofar as it must recognize it, in part, for its own existence. Sight, after all, its recognition, is established through what is understood as its opposite, as not seeing, and one expression of this is blindness. When blindness is performed as something other than the opposite and the absence of sight, it is disturbing; it disturbs the common-sensical idea that blindness seeks its own absence, namely sight. This is why Diderot (1982) and his company were surprised when 'their blind man' replied when asked if he wanted sight: 'If it were not for curiosity ... I would just as soon have long arms: It seems to me my hands would tell me more of what goes on in the moon than your eyes or your telescopes' (77–78). For Diderot's 'blind man,' sight is a mere curiosity. It does little in comparison with touch, to bring us in touch with the world or even with the moon. Eyes can see the moon, but not 'what goes on in the moon'. The sense of sight gives those who see a way to 'be in touch' with the world and its appearances, including people. One of those ways, a way that is often used to get someone's attention, to perform a 'look' is eye contact. As a way to concretize the premise of blindness as performance and that this performance is conducted in what I have called elsewhere 'the theatre of the eyes' (Healey 2021), I engage the phenomenon of eye contact as a way to draw out the implicit connections between sight and touch and, between blindness and sight. I make use of the work of blind disability studies theorist Georgina Kleege (2018), particularly when she says, 'eye contact ... feels like nothing for me' (5). This allows me to engage eye contact, typically understood as a visual phenomenon as first, a phenomenon that is reliant on touch and secondly, as one reliant on its performance to make an appearance. This paper shows, too, how eye contact, as Kleege suggests, has as much to do with feel as it does with sight. As Aristotle (1907) wonders, touch is not one, but 'a group of senses,' (II. 11) a sensorium. And perhaps, 'flesh' is its medium and its real organ lies inward. Perhaps blindness, too, is a sensorium, not a damaged one, but a keenly sensitive and perceptive one; a sensitivity and perception guided by the medium of the performance and located in the inwardness of coming in touch with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract \nPoints of interest This paper analyses the impact of disability on the social identities of siblings of young people and adults with cognitive disabilities. The main aim is to empirically support the concept of ‘disability by association’, which refers to the attribution of an associative identity due to the presence of a disabled member in the family. Evidence is drawn from a qualitative study, made up of 32 in-depth interviews and two focus groups with siblings without disabilities. The results confirmed the impact of interactive effects on the lives and behaviours of the interviewees. The internalisation of the oppression experienced by siblings, even in the absence of actual negative incidents, limits their social life experience and identity construction. Although the siblings develop non-medical representations of disability and impairment, this conceptual repertoire is not strong enough to challenge devalued images of cognitive disability. Siblings’ points of view are underdeveloped, while most studies focused on parents’ perspectives. The research found that siblings have different views on disability and impairment than parents. Siblings may experience stigma and exclusion due to their brothers and sisters’ disability. The research recommended that siblings’ difficulties and needs be taken into account when talking about the experience of disability within families. Siblings’ points of view are underdeveloped, while most studies focused on parents’ perspectives.The research found that siblings have different views on disability and impairment than parents.Siblings may experience stigma and exclusion due to their brothers and sisters’ disability.The research recommended that siblings’ difficulties and needs be taken into account when talking about the experience of disability within families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'inclusive education' has evolved to connote various meanings and recently, neoliberalism has impacted how 'inclusion' is understood and enacted. In this paper, we use a disability studies in education framework to compare and contrast radical against incrementalist and reductionist approaches to educational reform related to students with disabilities. In order to accomplish this, we completed a systematic review of 37 position statement documents from education and disability advocacy organisations published in the United States from 2000 to 2019, which is the time period after the No Child Left Behind Act was enacted. We analysed the statements using a priori codes, which include: high-stakes testing, standards-based reform, and accountability. Additionally, we inductively coded the statements for emergent sub-codes and additional themes. Our findings examine how these organisations describe how students with disabilities should fit into neoliberal reform priorities as connected to our theoretical framings. We found that most professional advocacy organisations in the US recommend reductionist approaches to educational reform, and many reframe the very meaning of inclusive education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on urban teacher education (UTE) programs have studied teacher candidates' (TCs) perceptions of urban communities and schooling, but have provided limited insights on how ideologies about dis/ability are entangled with race and other markers of difference, shaping TCs' learning about urban education. In this paper, we present an analysis drawn from a 2-year qualitative study that answers the following questions: What social categories of difference are present in a UTE program's curriculum? What ideologies related to dis/ability are utilized by TCs to describe urban education? We found that despite the UTE's program's strong emphasis on race and social justice, TCs not only drew from asset-based approaches but also from three interrelated ideologies of disablement to discuss students' behaviors: individualism, medical, and personal tragedy. We provide recommendations for UTE programs and research-based on an intersectional approach to teacher education that foregrounds dis/ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes up the struggles of doing of post-qualitative inquiry for inclusion and teacher education for inclusion. As collaborators who have taken different turns in the quest to understand posthumanist methodology, broadly speaking, we write with different voices. We take up two important themes—identity/ethics and becoming—to venture into conversations that might evoke new movements for disability studies in education (DSE) scholars. One of us takes up the questions of concern raised by the other to engage in various experimental forms of writing. We follow that with an exploration of posthumanist mattering to DSE researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the discourses within the academic field of Disability studies and Disability theology concern inclusion, one of the dominant themes employed is the concept of friendship. The theological work of Hans Reinders and John Swinton have been among those most cited works among disability theologians. Their work on the revolving subject will be considered within the scope of this approach. In light of a comparative analysis, my attempt in this paper is to search whether their views on friendship involve ideas crucial for reconsidering friendship's anthropology which, in my view, is crucial torethink friendship with disabled people and which, for such a reason, I will specify as an anthropology of relational interdependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School psychologists can engage in consultation to address inequities in educational opportunities to support multiply marginalized students. This critical work is codified in the NASP 2020 Practice Model, which outlines professional and organizational principles to facilitate school psychologists' engagement in equitable, effective supports to students, schools, and families. However, the legacy of historical beliefs about race and ability, based on white supremacy, have become intertwined in complex ways that are evident within and across multiple school ecologies, including consultation. In this paper, we apply DisCrit, a theoretical framework that incorporates a dual analysis of race and ability through an integration of critical race theory and disability studies, to provide a conceptual review of problem-solving consultation structure, roles, and purpose. Next, we highlight the potential of embedding equitable implementation, an emerging perspective from implementation science, into consultation. Equitable implementation occurs when strong equity components (e.g., trusting relationships, community-defined evidence) are integrated into the implementation process to facilitate quality delivery of programs. With this perspective and an illustrated case study, we hope to provide actionable steps for researchers and practitioners to center disrupting problematic ecologies and advancing equity as foundational in their consultation. We also reflect on opportunities, challenges, and implications for training and practice that are aligned with the NASP 2020 Practice Model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All bodies are governed by principles of temporality, yet regarding their roles as (potential) mothers, female bodies are kept under particularly strict observation. I argue that comics' power to offer 'a more inclusive perspective of medicine' can be made fruitful to interrogate the impact that implicit temporal regimes that govern pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period have on new mothers. Analysing two autobiographical comics, Teresa Wong's Dear Scarlet and Lucy Knisley's Kid Gloves, I examine how Knisley's struggles with pre-eclampsia and Wong's postnatal depression turn their time as new mothers into a period of 'crip time' in which their chrono-normative time experience is altered. Both artists use different aesthetic means to illustrate experiences that differ from the positive image of an easy birth, swift recovery and blissful postnatal period perpetuated by contemporary discourses. I suggest that the medium of comics is particularly suited to illustrate these shifts in their subjective time experience. My paper explores how Knisley's and Wong's graphic narratives create alternative representations of the corporeal experience of the postpartum period, providing a social commentary on the discursive constraints of motherhood and an underrepresented time in women's lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on our experiences as researchers and educators in multiple national contexts, we argue for the necessity for conceptualizations of 'inclusion' that subsume both the discourse of equity and the material conditions of its enactment. In this paper, we look specifically at two groups engaged in enacting inclusion – novice teachers in the US and school principals in Germany. Using the theoretical frame of new materialisms, we read our data in each regional context diffractively to disclose the intra-activity between multiple human and non-human agents that constituted the phenomenon of inclusion (Barad 2008, "Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter." In Material Feminisms, edited by S. Alaimo, and S. Hekman, 120–154. Bloomington: Indiana University Press). These readings disclosed the instability of categories that inform current framings of inclusion. Collectively, our study seeks to stimulate materially informed and contextually specific understandings of inclusion that accommodate the multiple overlapping influences which characterise processes of inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes up a call from activists and scholars in Mad and Disability Studies to pay more explicit attention to resistance. Drawing on conceptualizations of predictive, normative, and ideal expectations, we describe three ways 2SLGBTQ service users who have experienced psychosis resist unmet expectations of just treatment. These include: (1) defending self-respect through resistant thinking and resentment; (2) reducing discrepancy through lowering expectations of just treatment from others; (3) and protecting selves through distrust and self-reliance. This paper makes several contributions to existing literature: It expands our understanding of the 'everyday' forms of resistance that service users engage in, particularly those that are 'quiet' and risk being missed. By paying attention to quiet forms of resistance, we come to recognize the everyday 'moral talk' of service users, and opportunities for collectivizing the values underpinning this talk into ethics. Supporting the creation and affirmation of these ethics is one way for social work to address the exclusion of service users from the creation of social work ethical guidelines and respect and acknowledge the legitimacy of service user knowledges, especially their developing visions of justice and moral relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs a historiographical approach to review the allied fields of Egyptology and Egyptian Archaeology in relation to studies of disability and bodily differences in ancient Egypt. We incorporate critical disability studies and embodiment theories to consider whether ableism is prevalent across these disciplines. The focus of this study has been inverted from 'identifying' disability. Instead our primary driving question is: are Egyptological approaches to bodily differences and disabilities contributing to a production and maintenance of ableism in Egyptology? Here we first identify ableist narratives within numerous methodologies highlighting the need to reconsider existing approaches, terminologies, models, and assumptions regarding studies of disability in the ancient past. We then challenge readers to recognise ableism as a form of inequality in the existing scholarship, and in turn, call for better awareness of assumptions relating to bodily norms, terminologies, and inclusivity in ancient world studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact that developments in the field of neuroprosthetics will have on the ethical viability of healthy limb amputation, specifically in cases of Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). Developments in the field have meant that the prospect of such artificial components matching the utility of their biological counterparts is now a possibility. As such, arguments against the provision of therapeutic, healthy limb amputation, which are grounded in the perceived resultant harm of disability, need to be reconsidered. Drawing on philosophical insights, as well as the field of disability studies and BIID research, this paper argues that such neuroprosthetics presents a challenge for the fundamental dichotomy between the disabled and non-disabled, including the latter's perceived superiority. It goes on to suggest that healthy limb amputation, for those with BIID, should not be dismissed simply because of the distastefulness of the procedure, but rather be evaluated based upon its own merits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using narrative accounts, this paper will explore the process of living with progressive and life-changing conditions and how, out of that, a theology of joy can be developed. The method used is a modified version of the critical conversation method of theological reflection as outlined by Pattinson. In this approach, a conversation will take place between experience, using a narrative autoethnographic approach, between the voice of contemporary society and Christian theology and practice. From this dialogue, an approach to a theology of joy will be outlined. Life sometimes seems focused on health needs. Yet I live with joy. This is a joy that accepts God walking alongside me while still arguing with him about life. This is not the blind joy of black and white faith. Augustine said that 'I call [love to God] the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for his own sake and the enjoyment of one's self and one's neighbor for the sake of God." For him, joy in one's own life stems from a joyful relationship with God. This approach, as well as input from Moltmann and the more recent work of Miroslav Volf, will be explored in this paper. Only a theology of joy enables me to face the present and the future; this paper explores how this theology is developing, through experience, reflection, and engagement with Christian doctrine and teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights one key finding from a larger study where researchers utilised in-depth phenomenological interviews to explore the experiences and perspectives of public school teachers who espouse a disability studies in education (DSE) and social justice teaching identity. It specifically describes the relationship found between a lack of support for DSE teaching identities and educators' choice to leave public school teaching. It highlights how the lack of consistent and authentic administrative and institutional support for teachers underlying beliefs led the majority of the participants to feel increasingly isolated from their schools, and in their work as teachers. Thus, the paper describes the specific emotions and seclusion participants experienced in attempting to enact their commitments to DSE, which in turn exacerbated participants' understanding of their place in their particular school systems and in schooling more broadly. Finally, it describes participants' desires to leave public schooling and plans for continued DSE practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore how, in the final scenes of the novel Jane Eyre, disability is a vehicle for the involved characters to be able to designate emotional states to themselves and the other through performative emotional language usage, called 'emotives'. Through examining this use, I argue that the exchange of emotives cannot fully alleviate the different emotional states designated through them, but rather allow for a prosthetic relation of co-dependency to form between the novel's two main characters. Subsequently, I argue that the exchange of emotives and the use of language as prosthesis produces legible gaps in and between various performative speech-acts, which through this legibility may generate traceable patterns of affect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As teachers of disability studies, working with students from the health and psychological sciences, we tackle some of our pedagogical challenges and offer productive possibilities. We begin by introducing the offerings of disability studies and then consider our first question: how might we invite disability into our teaching? We introduce a Spanish tale – Por cuatro esquinitas de nada – that, while aimed at children and not explicitly engaged with a disability, permits us to engage in inter-textual analyses of disability. We find that students move through different stages of what we term distinction, idealisation and invisibility/concealment. We then address our second question – what does it mean to teach disability? We answer this with reference to the generative practices of two teaching methodologies: disposal and disavowal. We conclude the paper by considering the importance of generating critical theories of disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the historical project and idea of comparison, then moves on to a discussion of the role of thinking theoretically in terms of process and not object relations, a shift from a focus on binaries to aporias. The paper outlines the development of Studies in Ableism as well as presuppositional foundations of systems of ableism, and the delimitation of abledment and disablement. Finally, the paper contributes to thinking about the meaning of ableism in a more precise way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates how school toilets and 'school readiness' are used to assess children against developmental milestones. Such developmental norms both inform school toilet design and practice, and perpetuate normative discourses of childhood as middle-class, white, 'able', heteronormative, cissexist and inferior to adulthood. Critical psychology and critical disability studies frame our analysis of conversations from online practitioner forums. We show that school toilets and the norms and ideals of 'toilet training' act as one device for Othering those who do not fit into normative Western discourses of 'childhood'. Furthermore, these idealised discourses of 'childhood' reify classed, racialised, gendered and dis/ablist binaries of good/bad parenting. We conclude by suggesting new methodological approaches to school toilet research which resist perpetuating developmental assumptions and prescriptions. In doing this, the paper is the first to explicitly bring school toilet research into the realms of critical psychology and critical disability studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and critically discusses a disability awareness program that was addressed to non-disabled children aged between 6-8 years old in Cyprus. The main aims were to explore how disability studies and anti-oppressive pedagogies could inform decisions on structured activities and materials to support children understand disability as condition of life, and recognize disabling practices. Artefacts from children's work and narratives are presented throughout the paper to inform decisions and choices in relation to the program. The discussion draws on international literature and critically examines: a. how disability feminists' focus on experiences of disability can have a central place in awareness raising programs, and can be further strengthened by a social model understanding of disability, b. the local context and the use of language as raised by postmodernists/poststructuralists, and c. the use of cartoons as a form of art that can help recognize and challenge dominant disability stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and analyzes six short first-person films produced through a collaborative multimedia storytelling workshop series focused on experiences of autism, education and inclusion. The aim of the project is to co-create new understandings of autism beyond functionalist and biomedical ones that reify autism as a problem of disordered brains and underpin special education. We fashion a body becoming disability studies in education approach to proliferate stories of autism outside received cultural scripts – autism as biomedical disorder, brain-based difference, otherworldliness, lost or stolen child and more. Our approach keeps the meaning of autism moving, always emerging, resisting, fading away and becoming again in relation to context, time, space, material oppressions, cultural scripts, intersecting differences, surprising bodies and interpretative engagement. We argue that the films we present and analyse not only significantly change and critique traditional special education approaches based on assumptions of the normative human as non-autistic, they also enact 'autism' as a becoming process and relation with implications for inclusive educators. By this we mean that the stories shift what autism might be and become, and open space for a proliferation of representations and practices of difference in and beyond educational contexts that support flourishing for all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children with diverse physical, communication and/or cognitive impairments are often overlooked as active research participants. This paper challenges and lays bare norms and constructs, such as ableism and adultism, which lead to children with disabilities being left out or researched by-proxy. Additionally, the paper contests these constructs through discussing and presenting participant-centred research methods that seeks to enable children’s involvement and establish them as legitimate research participants. The application of these methods in children geography studies is illustrated through the author’s own use of creative methods of activity-based interviews and co-construction narration with older children with various physical/neurological impairments. Overall, the aim of the paper is to bridge some gaps, dispel assumptions and inspire researchers with additional ways of conceptualising and approaching research with children with disabilities, since the inclusion of all children in research rests with researchers and their understanding and use of appropriate research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the visual vocabulary of Marvel's Avengers movies through a study of characters with acquired impairments. When an impairment exhibits the characters' commitment to justice, they are martyr-heroes; when their origins "deform" their bodies, they are monsters in need of redemption. Putting these stereotypes in conversation with Christianity offers a heuristic to interrogate the meanings conveyed by these characters' bodies. Using a theological and disability-informed perspective, I argue that Marvel's uncritical adoption of tropes about physical impairment perpetuates a tradition of ableism that is undergirded by the Christian theological imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inclusive education has often been fronted as the panacea in the education of disabled children. Governments have made efforts for disabled children to access schools with their nondisabled counterparts. However, inclusive education should go beyond the mere presence of disabled children in mainstream schools to the participation and achievement of such children. This paper uses the theoretical approach of Disability Studies in Education to explore the extent that the traditional schooling system is willing to go in the pursuit of inclusive education for disabled learners. Can the schooling system change from the current cohort based model to an individual based model? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson has made a moving case for what she calls conserving the generative resourcefulness of disability. She thinks that in showing all the good that various disabilities and the people with them make to the world she is also showing the inherent moral value of people with disabilities. However, her argument is ultimately utilitarian because it lacks a metaphysical referent. In this paper, I offer the Body of Christ as a way of showing the resourcefulness of disability and people with disabilities and securing their inherent moral value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical discourse currently dominates as the defining framework for madness in educational praxis. Consequently, ideas rooted in a mental health/illness binary abound in higher learning, as both curriculum content and through institutional procedures that reinforce structures of normalcy. While madness, then, is included in university spaces, this inclusion proceeds in ways that continue to pathologize madness and disenfranchise mad people. This paper offers Mad Studies as an alternative entry point for engaging with madness in higher education, arguing that centring madness in pedagogical praxis has the potential to interrupt hegemonic ways of knowing, being, and learning. We illustrate how this disruption is facilitated by examining particular aspects of pedagogical praxis mobilized in Mad Studies, including building curriculum alongside mad community, centring madness in course design and student assessment, and the practice of mad positivity. Ultimately, this approach provides a metacurriculum of unlearning, challenging students to consider how their engagement with madness in the classroom, and beyond, has the potential to disrupt sanist systems of oppression and the normalcy they reconstitute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the changing terrain of disability support policy in Australia. Drawing on a critical disability framework of policy sociology, the paper considers the policy problem of access to education for people with disabilities under recent reform by means of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which commenced full roll-out across the country from July 2016. The paper reviews NDIS reports, legislation and associated literature to consider how eligibility to scheme participation and education services are shaped, and how education is positioned in the development and implementation of the NDIS. The analysis highlights tensions that exist for people with disabilities and their families who both access the scheme and who might draw on its provision to support their education, because of the way the policy is oriented towards pathological categorisation, standardised outcomes and service delineation rather than integrated support and informed involvement. The paper concludes by arguing that despite the policy priority across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries of increasing lifelong learning opportunities, fragmented NDIS policy in Australia prevents people with disabilities from achieving this ideal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inclusive education in general, and disability-inclusive education in particular, is a high-level priority for development work in aid-supported countries. This paper presents a bottom-up process of developing disability-inclusive education policy in one country – the Solomon Islands. It is well understood that the promotion of quality in disability-inclusive education requires a clearly stated policy; however, in many developing countries, there has been a history of policy borrowing rather than culturally informed policy development. This paper will critically discuss how policy development occurs in aid-funded development work and then offers an alternative model of Australian aid-supported policy development as an in-depth case study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Salamanca Statement is held as a high-water mark in the history of the global development of inclusive education. It represented agreements bringing together representatives from 92 governments and 25 international organisations to advocate for a more inclusive education for students with disabilities. Since 1994 the Salamanca Statement has been referred to by international education organisations, national education jurisdictions, and disability advocacy organisations as a foundation for progressing inclusive education. In this respect the Salamanca Statement has been important for the inclusive education and Education for All [UNESCO 1998. From Special Needs Education to Education for All: Discussion Paper for the International Consultative Forum on Education for All. Paris: UNESCO] movements. However, international agreements and conventions are fragile in the face of local contingencies and become difficult to apply. We examine the case of inclusive education in Greece to reflect on this complex relationship between international aspirations and the real politic of individual nation states. Greece, like other nations, has embraced the discourse of inclusive education and its successive governments can demonstrate policy activity and public expenditure on the education of disabled students. This is remarkable in a climate of 'crisis' and 'austerity' where the only investment in the teaching workforce is in the area of inclusive education. However, is Greek education more inclusive in practice as well as rhetoric? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay draws on critical disability studies and blindness studies to rethink our commonsense understanding of vision and unsettle the normative sensory subject that is lodged in visual culture studies. Through a disability studies critique of visual culture studies and a juxtaposition of blind studies alongside the canonical images of the "male gaze" and the "white gaze" this paper argues that (visual) difference does not exist in the world waiting to be seen, but that difference is produced in visual power relations. This essay proposes that the possibilities of visual culture are determined by structures of seeing, rather than physiology or optics, arguing that as long as visual culture and social justice studies are lodged within a Cartesian conception of the subject, they falter in conceptualizing the social construction of perception and difference, for they have not destabilized the "distribution of the sensible" (Rancière) of their own epistemic tradition. Race, gender, and disability are apprehended here not primarily as identity categories, but as possibilities of the body that develop(ed) in tandem in complex socio-historical formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every family culture is ruled by unspoken codes. Throughout the short film Lode's Code, Marieke Vandecasteele (the first author) searches for these codes within her own family in a visual-ethnographic way. In traditional research, families with a family member with a disability are often pinned down to individual categories linked with linear explanations. Vandecasteele's search for the code of her brother Lode and for her own position in the parental nest—with leaving home as a red thread—resulted in a hybrid animated documentary where subjective experiences prevail over the search for explanations. It shows how layered codes intra-act in the family machine and can (be) move(d). This paper focuses on the rhizomatic process of making the film. How were the keys to Vandecasteele's family code shaped and what was the role of animation film as a medium? An in-depth discussion shows how poetic research of this kind offers opportunities within the interdisciplinary research domain of Disability Studies to let the complexity inherent to a family with a member with a disability emerge in all its richness and multilayeredness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aligned with the broader movement from structuralism to the post-structuralisms [Lather, P. 2013. “Methodology-21: What Do We Do in the Afterward?”International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education26 (6): 634–645; St. Pierre, E. A. 2009. “Afterword: Decentering Voice in Qualitative Inquiry.” InVoice in Qualitative Inquiry: Challenging Conventional, Interpretive, and Critical Conceptions in Qualitative Research, edited by A. Y. Jackson and L. A. Mazzei, 221–236. London: Routledge; St. Pierre, E. A. 2013. “The Posts Continue: Becoming.”International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education26 (6): 646–657], research in disability studies for the past two decades has found ‘the potholes’ [Miller, L., J. B. Whalley, and I. Stronach. 2012. “From Structuralism to Poststructuralism.” InResearch Methods in the Social Sciences, edited by B. Somekh and C. Lewin. London: SAGE] of disability rights scholarship. In this paper, I offer a critical research framework in the field of disability studies in education that is theoretical, political and personal. Concentrating on the positioning of disability, I draw on the methodological tools of post-structural representation, subjectivity and constructivist grounded theory to study how discursive practices within (and around) secondary schools shape ‘included’ disabled subjects. In the paper I develop this framework and then demonstrate its application in ongoing research that critically counters the conventions that marginalize particular students in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a conversation about growing an inclusive field of disability studies. The paper draws on data collected through an analysis of existing disability studies programmes in selected Canadian universities. The paper makes a case for including diverse perspectives, experiences, viewpoints, and voices in these programmes. In this work, I call for an interrogation of the normativity in the field of disability studies and for critical reflections and discussions about growing a diverse and inclusive field that pays attention to marginalised populations. There is a need to rethink the exclusionary nature of knowledge, space, bodies, and pedagogy in the field, which perpetuates Eurocentric culture, thoughts, and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper will explore the effect that creative, non-traditional uses of audio description (AD) have on the audience during a performance, and how they trouble normative understandings of aesthetics and representation. This will be done by analysing two pieces created by Extant Theatre, the UK's only professional theatre company of visually impaired people. Both pieces use highly visual forms of performance in order to highlight the necessity of descriptive access for both practitioners and spectators experiencing these pieces, as well as the effect that description can have on the comprehension of an image. I will dissect these performances by juxtaposing my experience as a practitioner in these pieces with some of the methodological structures inherent within disability studies and identity politics, such as Rosemary Garland-Thomson's research on staring. AD, in its standard form, is an access tool for blind and visually impaired spectators that is almost always placed on top of an already completed performance, and hidden from the view of those not using the service. When that dynamic is shifted to allow for everyone, performer and audience alike, to experience and potentially contribute to the descriptions being given, regardless of visual status, the perceptions around the performance can change. This paper argues that the creative input of AD into a theatrical piece can open up wider questions around how aesthetics are viewed by performer and audience alike. Also, by making an access tool into a collaboration between audience and performer, the story that is communicated and the way the characters within that story are represented can break away from normative methods of performance. This then opens up possibilities for new ways of thinking about and perceiving how performance is made, why it is done and what it might become. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The words ‘colonised’ and ‘colonising’ have recently been adopted in global North fields such as disability studies, highlighting notions of colonised bodies by colonising practices, with the implication that some or other ‘decolonisation’ is required. But these words remain little more than abstract and dehistoricised metaphors in these Eurocentric academic projects. This paper critically maps out some arguments as to why the colonial encounter is not simply a metaphor and cannot be bypassed in any global disability analysis. The paper argues how this historical event transcends the discursive, a violent materiality framing disability as a historical narrative and human condition, while (re)positioning disability as a useful optic through which to examine the dynamics of imperialism. The colonial provides the landscape for understanding contemporary Southern spaces within which disability is constructed and lived – neocolonised spaces hosting what I callneocolonised bodies. The paper concludes thatdecolonisation, just like colonialism, is not a metaphor. Instead, it is a continuous violent and political process owned by the global South but open to collaboration, drawing on forms of resistance that have long colonial lineages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the early 1990s Asperger's syndrome (AS) has steadily gained media attention and public recognition to the point of being described as a cultural obsession. Using multi-method inquiry this paper: (1) challenges prevailing medicalised discourses of AS by including a satire of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV) [1994. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing] and a critique of advertisements created about AS and other related disabilities; (2) offers alternative interpretations within social, cultural, historical, and personal contexts; (3) foregrounds the experience and understanding of AS from individuals with AS; (4) contemplates the need for schools and colleges to become more receptive to neurodiversity, and to support students with AS. The author calls attention to the ongoing problematics of defining AS and illustrates how disability studies in education helps reframe AS in diverse ways, valuing the ontological and epistemological differences between ‘official’ representations and individuals with the AS label.††Both professional and popular literature use Asperger and Asperger's interchangeably. The latter is used in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]