Uncertainty and disability literacy : Drawing on processes of becoming in parenting a deaf child to inform teachers’ professional development

• This paper will explore the role of uncertainty in parenting in spaces of sensorial differentness which envelopes the relationship between a hearing parent and a deaf child. This process of transformation, a becoming process in an adult life builds on coming to know about life conditions of another individual. Lived, in-depth experiences of disability and uncertainty are what seem to enable parents to adopt alternative attitudes going against societal norms and values about what it means to have a disability. They make choices based on how they imagine their adult child’s future belonging and identity. The analysis builds on the findings from the ethnographic material in a study on parenting children who use cochlear implants. Qualities certain parents exhibited and others were in the process of developing are the examples used to show how uncertainty is involved in ‘unlearning’, an orientation which allows new insights about disability and being deaf to guide decisions and actions. It will be argued that this social learning process does not end in complete knowledge but rather as a way of becoming disability literate which can increase and recede because of how it involves the minds and lives of others. Connecting other adults’ becoming processes in teacher education programs to how parents continue arriving as they continue ‘reading their child’ is discussed in terms of embodied critical thinking about ableism and audism. The continuous arrivals which imbue adults’ interactions with oppressed groups is explored drawing on theories on transformation and community.The frameworks of disability studies in education and social justice in education drawing on care ethics will serve to employ the term allyship to present how following the paths others formed can be studied to develop one’s own disability literacy. This concept of allyship offers pedagogical hope which bell hooks describes as an integral part of education (hooks, 2003). Allyship in disability contexts is an active, consistent and reflective practice of examining how one holds systemic power over people with disabilities. Pausing to use the idea of reflective practice as an entry to one’s critical thinking is what intended to develop the concept of ‘embodied critical thinking.’ The focus is aimed at how one’s own involvement, as a temporarily able-bodied person seeks to end oppression in solidarity with disabled groups and individuals. The concept of allyship falls under what can be deemed the privilege turn or privilege studies in disability where a disability literacy is a social literacy of consciousness and awareness of the conditions of the lives of disabled individuals and groups and how they are affected by interpersonal relationships (Adams Lyngbäck, 2016). Case examples of classroom activities and discussions centering on ableism will be employed to further develop understandings of allyship in education.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

disability literacy

allyship

embodiment

specialpedagogik

Special Education

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)