This section includes resources concerning faculty and staff as well as other teachers with disabilities. Some focus on how teaching is affected by disability (and on teaching the subject of disability studies), others that discuss “passing” as able-bodied and keeping disabilities hidden, as well as others offering retrospectives on academic careers with disabilities.
Anderson, R. C. (2006). Teaching (with) disability: Pedagogies of lived experience. In L. M. Cooks & K. LeBesco (Eds.), The Pedagogy of the Teacher’s Body [Special issue]. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 28(3&4), 367-379.
“The disability perspective promises new insights for critical pedagogy. Disability is not just another specialty with concerns loosely related to other minorities. The experience of disability is relevant to all marginalized groups—for all groups have people with disabilities in them. The persistent irony is that the experiences of people with disabilities have been noticeably absent from critical discourse within these groups. Indeed, people with disabilities are the world’s largest multicultural minority. This essay presents a means for considering disability in educational practice, and identifies points of discovery for future critical research. Specifically, it considers the intersections of experience and pedagogy that professors with disabilities bring to the classroom” (p. 367).
Anderson, R. J., Keller, C. E., & Karp. J. M. (Eds.). (1998). Enhancing diversity: Educators with disabilities. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
The 43 million people with disabilities form this country’s largest minority group, yet they are markedly under-employed as educators. Enhancing Diversity: Educators with Disabilities paves the way for correcting this costly omission. Editors Anderson, Karp, and Keller have called upon the knowledge of 19 other renowned contributors to address the important issues raised in Enhancing Diversity, including the place of disability in discussions of diversity in education, research on educators with disabilities that validates their capabilities, and information on the qualifications desired in and the demands made of education professionals. Legal precedents are cited and explained, and examples of efforts to place disabled educators are presented, along with recommendations on how disabled individuals and school administrators can work toward increased opportunities. Interviews with 25 disabled educators discussing how they satisfactorily fulfill their professional requirements completes this thoughtful-provoking book.
Beretz, E. M. (2003). Hidden disability and an academic career. In L. Hanley (Ed.), The New Academic Community [Feature issue]. Academe, 89(4). Retrieved from http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2003/JA/Feat/Bere.htm.
“Institutions and attitudes impose cruel choices on faculty with hidden disabilities. One key to resolving these choices is greater institutional flexibility.”
Blaser, A. W. (2012). Chapter 7: Trial and error with assistive, accessible, augmentative technology. In J. E. Aitken, J. P. Fairley, & J. K. Carlson (Eds.), Communication technology for students in special education and gifted programs (pp. 94-97). Hershey, PA: ICI Global.
This essay describes my experiences since 1995, teaching at the university level, and using assistive technology. My hope and purpose in writing this essay is that my experiences will not be “exceptional,” since technology works at its best when it is “seamless” and mundane.
Brueggemann, B. J., Garland-Thomson, R., & Kleege, G. (2005). What her body taught (or, teaching about and with a disability): A conversation. Feminist Studies, 31(1), 13-33.
Brueggemann, Garland-Thompson, and Kleege focus on their challenges and strategies as feminist scholars and teachers with disabilities in the classroom. Key to their discussion is the function of different structures—pedagogical and institutional—that both enable and deter their efforts. In the classroom, students forgetting about their disabilities or normalizing them seems to erase the productive tension through difference that their presence introduces. Their goal is not to erase disability, but rather to reconfigure students’ understandings of disability as not having a master status–to change the way disability matters to the students.
Brueggemann, B. J., & Moddelmog, D. A. (2002). Coming-out pedagogy: Risking identity in language and literature classrooms. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, 2(3), 311-335.
Discusses the similarities between the “coming-out conversations” of gay and lesbian studies and disability studies. “In the field of disability studies…scholar-teachers have begun to talk about how and why to claim a disability identity rather than remain silent about one’s body and ability in the classroom” (p. 311). This article is also in the edited book The Teacher’s Body—see below.
Bucaro, T., & Kopfstein, R. (1999). Coming out: Claiming disability in and out of the classroom. Reflections, 5(4), 71-81.
In this narrative, two social work educators, one with a visible disability and another with an invisible disability, tell about their experiences with disability and how their decision to disclose has informed their students and colleagues and helped them claim disability as part of their identity. This is one of nine articles in a special issue on disability as diversity.
Burns, E., & Bell, S. (2010). Voices of teachers with dyslexia in Finnish and English further and higher educational settings. Teachers and Teaching, 16(5), 529-543.
This paper sheds light onto a poorly presented group of professionals–teachers with dyslexia in Finnish and English further and higher educational settings. The purpose of this qualitative study was, firstly, to discover what teachers with dyslexia could tell us about the manifestation of dyslexia and the challenges they face in the practice of teaching, and secondly, to find out what these professionals feel about being a dyslexic teacher. The data were gathered through the narrative interviews of six teachers and was analysed using thematic narrative analysis. Teachers’ narratives revealed that they had accepted their difficulties but also discovered their own strengths to overcome them. The data also indicated that these teachers appreciate their educator’s role, acknowledging the importance of empathy and understanding towards their students. Teachers with dyslexia can be successful and useful in training fellow practitioners to be more aware of students’ difficulties with dyslexia, hence having the potential to broaden capacity for inclusion and social equality in educational establishments.
Campbell, F. K. (2009). Having a career in disability studies without even becoming
disabled! The strains of the disabled teaching body. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 13(7), 713-725.
Does it matter who teaches disability studies, whether that teacher has a disability or not? Maybe this might strike the reader as a peculiar question – to focus on the teacher’s body or knowledge standpoint. There are certain theoretical and ontological implications in asking such questions. This article is an attempt to theorise about the way the bodies of teachers with disabilities are transmuted within the arena of teaching critical disability studies at colleges and universities. In particular, it explores the ways disabled teachers’ bodies can contribute to experiencing alterity outside of the frame of ‘other’ and the ways that the disabled teaching body can displace the objectification of disability through pedagogical enactments of the lived experiences of disablement. In this way, this article refutes the assertion made by McWilliam and Taylor in 1998 that the pedagogical inspiration of bodies should not be celebrated. Instead, the focus is on working through points of difference between the way normative teacher’s bodies and the disabled teaching body is mediated in the processes of subjectification, identifying points of convergence that can benefit dialogue across varied sites of scholarship
Chouinard, V. (1996, Winter/1995, Fall). Like Alice through the looking glass: Accommodation in academia. Resources for Feminist Research, 24(3/4), 3-11.
This article explores issues of equity and accommodation for disabilities in an academic setting. The author chronicles her struggles with her university’s administration to implement structures and policies that would not put her at a disadvantage. Her personal experience is placed in a wider context of the devaluing of women’s work in academia generally.
Chouinard, V. (2010). “Like Alice through the looking glass” II: The struggle for accommodation continues. Resources for Feminist Research, 33(3/4), 161-177.
This article provides an autoethnographic account of the more recent phase of my ongoing struggles, as a disabled female faculty member at a Canadian university, for my legal rights to reasonable accommodation and freedom from discrimination on the basis of disability. It is a sequel to an article dealing with the early years of my struggles for accommodation, published in this journal [vol. 24, nos. 3/4 (1995/96)]. It focuses on the many social barriers to accommodation, inclusion and equality of rights that I encountered in an academic workplace. These included devaluations of my contributions in the workplace, social and spatial exclusion from events in my academic unit, prolonged systemic salary discrimination, resistance to developing a reasonable accommodation plan and even hostility and punishment for being vocal on accommodation issues and, ultimately, taking legal action against the University. This article not only sheds light on some of the challenges facing disabled women who struggle for accommodation in academic workplaces but also encourages others to share their experiences of struggling for fair and reasonable accommodation.
Churchman, D., & King, S. (2009). Academic practice in transition: Hidden stories of academic identities. Teaching in Higher Education, 14(5), 507-516.
Academic work is becoming increasingly restrictive and controlled as tertiary institutions move towards a more corporate managerialistic mode of operating. This paper uses a narrative lens to explore the ways in which academic staff make sense of this new environment. In particular, it compares academic staff’s stories of their worklife with the official organisation – representative stories promulgated by the university. The study examines the ways academic staff make sense of their workplace when the corporate stories no longer reflect their views of work, institution or personal values. Data gathered during a world café event depicts two constructions of academic identity and compares these private stories with the public stories provided by the university. The paper concludes by addressing some of the concerns inherent in the loss of plurality that occurs when tertiary institutions move towards an homogenised environment.
Compton, M. V. (1997). Constructions of educational meaning in the narratives of four Deaf women teachers. American Annals of the Deaf, 142(5), 356-362.
Deaf teachers bring unique perspectives to the teaching of deaf and hard of hearing students, yet their “voices” have been recognized in neither sociological, psychological, nor philosophical accounts of education and deafness. In the present ethnographic study, narrative analysis is used to frame a description of how four deaf women make sense of their lives as teachers as they disclose their beliefs concerning teaching, their deafness, and their connection with the Deaf community.
Connor, D. J., Ferri, B. A., Solis, S., Valle, J., & Volpitta, D. (2005). Teachers with LD: Ongoing negotiations with discourses of disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 38(1), 62-78.
The purpose of this study is to examine how 4 teachers with learning disabilities (LD) negotiate multiple, complex, and sometimes contradictory discourses of disabilities in constructing their own understandings of LD. We chose to study teachers with LD because of their unique access to at least 3 different sources of knowledge about LD: (a) professional discourses on disability, (b) mainstream cultural messages about LD, and (c) insights gained from their own life experience. We drew on aspects of critical discourse analysis and narrative inquiry for this investigation. Our findings indicate that participants draw on these discourses and on their teaching experience in various and complex ways to construct meaning about LD. In some instances, participants use the dominant discourses; at other times, they work to subvert these meanings. Yet, paradoxically, whether speaking with or against these meanings, their voices are inescapably engaging with authoritative discourses and cultural scripts surrounding disability.
Cook, E. D., & Gibbs, H. R. (2009). Diverse academic faculty: A precious resource for innovative institutions. In T. R. Cole, T. J. Goodrich, & E. R. Gritz (Eds.), Faculty health in academic medicine: Physicians, scientists, and the pressures of success (pp. 93-111). Online: Humana Press.
Diverse academic faculty contribute unique perspectives and experiences that lead to creative growth of academic centers. Although the US population has become more diverse, academic faculty remain primarily heterosexual, able bodied, white, and male. These centers risk losing touch with the population at large and the issues they face. It is important to recruit and retain diverse academic faculty since they train future scientists and physicians who will make discoveries and apply treatments to the entire population. There is a paucity of data about diverse academic faculty and their unique additional stressors impacting on faculty health. In this chapter we discuss these stressors as they apply to race and ethnicity and faculty with disabilities. We also examine the important associations between marginalization, isolation, and silence experienced by diverse faculty and the stress that follows.
Cooks, L. (2007). Accounting for my teacher’s body: What can I teach/What can we learn? Feminist Media Studies, 7(3), 299-312.
The ideals of democratic education most often rely on a logic of identity that, as Theodor Adorno has argued, denies and represses difference. Young (1987, p. 63) observes that this repression relies on “an opposition between public and private dimensions of human life, which corresponds to an opposition between reason on the one hand, and the body, affectivity, and desire on the other.” This paper examines the private/public dualisms that construct the female teacher’s body in the space of schooling. In particular, the paper constructs three scenes: reading student evaluations at the end of term, sweating through class, and a class discussion about identity, to discuss how the female teacher’s competence is constructed through discourses of the body. Borrowing partly from Michel Foucault, the essay focuses on the ways discourses assumed to be private (the body) become part of the public space in order to evaluate intellectual competency. In this manner, the rational discursive space of the classroom is maintained through confusing the conformity of the body with the efficiency of the mind. The essay works toward a pedagogical stance that opens up dialogue with and through this female teacher’s body. Through drawing attention to how the body performs through (non)conformity, this article hopes to not only deconstruct power/body relations but also offer a means to disrupt them.
Diament, M. (2005, October 14). A secret syndrome. Section: The Faculty. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 52(8), A10.
Professors with a mild form of autism must decide whether to reveal their diagnosis.
Freedman, D. P., & Holmes, M. S. (Eds.). (2003). The teacher’s body: Embodiment, authority, and identity in the academy. Albany: SUNY Press.
These highly personal essays from a range of academic settings explore the palpable moments of discomfort, disempowerment, and/or enlightenment that emerge when we discard the fiction that the teacher has no body. Visible and/or invisible, the body can transform both the teacher’s experience and classroom dynamics. When students think the teacher’s body is clearly marked by ethnicity, race, disability, size, gender, sexuality, illness, age, pregnancy, class, linguistic and geographic origins, or some combination of these, both the mode and the content of education can change. Other, less visible aspects of a teacher’s body, such as depression or a history of sexual assault, can have an equally powerful impact on how we teach and learn. The collection anatomizes these moments of embodied pedagogy as unexpected teaching opportunities and examines their apparent impact on teacher-student educational dynamics of power, authority, desire, friendship, open-mindedness, and resistance.
To view the Table of Contents, go to: http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?=60772.
Francis, L. P., & Silvers, A. (2008, Spring). No disability standpoint here! Law school faculties and the invisibility problem. In A. Bernstein (Ed.), Lawyers with Disabilities [Symposium]. University of Pittsburgh Law Review, 69(3), 413-474.
“In this Article, we consider whether there is reason to urge an increase in the number of individuals with disabilities, especially visible or otherwise evident disabilities, in the ranks of law school faculties” (pp. 413-414).
French, S. (1994). Teaching on the telephone: The experience of a disabled tutor and her students. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 9(3), 43-45.
Article detailing the experience of a tutor with visual impairments teaching a course on disability via telephone, long before modern day teleconferencing and technologies were developed.
Gilson, S. F. (2000). Discussion of disability and use of self in the classroom. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 20(3&4), 125-136.
As with other minorities, social work faculty with disabilities often face a dilemma of which personal experiences to discuss in the classroom and how to accomplish this to advance the teaching-learning process. This discussion of disability utilizing direct narrative experiences, seeking to maximize the quality of teaching and student learning about disability while maintaining personal boundaries is both complex and exposes faculty with disabilities to some personal and professional consequence. This article integrates scholarly literature with personal reflection and narrative to explore the use of the classroom as a laboratory of evidence based inquiry and critical thinking, infused with multicultural or diversity rich material, specifically disability based discussions. Further expansion of the discussion to all minority faculty is undertaken and guidelines for faculty use of self in the classroom are advanced.
Goodwin, S. A., & Morgan, S. (2012, May-June). Chronic illness and the academic career: The hidden epidemic in higher education. Academe, 97(3). Retrieved from http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2012/MJ/Feat/good.htm.
“One of the things I find difficult is that many of my colleagues do not know of my illness. I can only assume what they might think privately about my tiredness and various energy levels. I try to be “on” at work, but some days are better than others. . . . Even the people who do know that I have medical problems do not always get what that means. . . . It seems to be a losing battle. Trying to educate others rarely seems to make much of a difference, since I look fine.
—contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education forum on chronic illness and academia
The academic quoted above is not alone; he or she is experiencing dilemmas familiar to the thousands of faculty and staff members who manage challenging academic careers along with the challenges of a chronic illness. Recent research by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation indicates that more than half of Americans experience at least one chronic illness—a longterm health condition that persists over time, has recurring (often “invisible”) symptoms, and requires long-term medical intervention. Aside from a 2008 National Science Foundation report in which 7.3 percent of science and engineering faculty members reported having disabilities, no large-scale studies have tracked chronic illness among faculty members. The National Science Foundation’s data likely underestimate the percentage of faculty with disabling illnesses, given the challenges of documenting disability and the fact that the data were collected prior to changes that broadened the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).”
Griffiths, S. (2012, April). ‘Being dyslexic doesn’t make me less of a teacher’. School placement experiences of student teachers with dyslexia: Strengths, challenges and a model for support. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 12(2), 54-65.
This research investigated the school practice placement experiences of six student teachers with dyslexia representing each year of a 3-year initial teacher training course at a UK university. Placement performance and outcome has enormous implications for student teachers in demonstrating their professional competence and ability to meet the Training and Development Agency for Schools Professional Standards for Teachers and obtain qualified teacher status. The research focused thematically on student strengths, challenges and management strategies using a case research approach. Findings indicate student teachers with dyslexia bring unacknowledged strengths to placements but face a number of challenges despite proactive adoption of management strategies. A model of placement support to enhance student effectiveness has been developed. Conclusions indicate the importance of listening to the student’s voice to understand individual placement requirements and co-ordinate and implement specific reasonable adjustments as required by UK legislation.
Hockings, C., Cooke, S., Yamashita, H., McGinty, S., & Bowl, M. (2009). ‘I’m neither
entertaining nor charismatic…’ Negotiating university teacher identity within diverse student groups. Teaching in Higher Education, 14(5), 483-494.
This paper focuses on the ways in which lecturers in two universities negotiated their identities as teachers of students from diverse backgrounds within the context of the changing nature of higher education. This research forms part of a two-year project which explored, among other things, the influence of student and teacher identities on academic engagement. Drawing on interview, focus group and classroom observation data, we consider the influence of educational and professional experiences on teacher identity. We also explore the influence of teachers’ conceptions about themselves as teachers, about their students and their institutions on the teaching and academic engagement of students from a range of backgrounds. We conclude by suggesting how academic developers might support teachers in developing their understanding of student diversity and create opportunities to explore these concepts in relation to their own identities as teachers.
Kelly, A. B. (2001, April). How Deaf women construct teaching, language, culture, and gender: An ethnographic study of ASL teachers. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
This ethnographic dissertation studies five Deaf women who teach American Sign Language (ASL), exploring the intersections of teaching, language and culture, and gender as perceived by these women. It examines how Deaf women bridge dominant mainstream culture and Deaf culture through teaching ASL and Deaf Culture. It also inquires how these women construct language, culture, and gender as ASL teachers and through their personal lives. These issues were explored through three videotaped interviews with each informant, capped by two rounds of videotaped participant-observations in the women’s ASL classes. This approach produced insights into their teaching practices, attitudes and beliefs leading up to their constructions about teaching, language, culture, and gender. Analysis of the materials collected demonstrates that these five women identify themselves as primarily Deaf with concern about gender as secondary. Although they expressed some resistance towards the dominant mainstream American culture, they clearly value their careers as teachers of ASL and Deaf Culture to mostly hearing learners, bridging the two worlds. This dissertation shows how their unique experience as Deaf individuals reflect their lives as mothers, daughters, students, and partners in social relationships, and how their roles are similar and dissimilar. Their lived experiences as Deaf women affect how they teach, how they perceive hearing people, and how they understand language, culture, and gender.
Kerschbaum, S. L. (2012, September/October). Access in the academy: Accommodating faculty members with disabilities can help everyone. Academe, 98(5). Number 5. Available: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2012/SO/Feat/kers.htm.
“To function as a truly inclusive workplace, one that values and welcomes disability, higher education needs to move beyond narrow legalism and adopt a new perspective that conceptualizes access as a social issue rather than as a set of specific solutions to individual problems. By welcoming disability into the academy while reconceiving access, institutions can address disability as an issue that permeates all aspects of the social and physical environments that comprise the university workplace.”
Kleege, G. (2002). Disabled students come out: Questions without answers. In S. L. Snyder, B. J. Brueggemann, & R. Garland-Thomson (Eds.), Disability Studies: Enabling the humanities (pp. 308-316). New York: Modern Language Association of America.
The chapter recounts the interaction of the author, a professor who has a disability, with students both with and without disabilities on disability issues that surface in her writing course. There are other authors in this edited book who are professors with disabilities.
Kudlick, C. (2006). A history profession for every body. Journal of Women’s History, 18(1), 163-167.
This is part of a special section in this issue on History Practice: Conditions of Work for Women Historians in the Twenty-First Century and is a response to the article by Linda Kerber, “Risking Our Dreams” about women in the history of higher education:
“At the heart of Linda Kerber’s call for a better understanding of how gender and class biases shape the modern academic workplace lies a large and vexing question: what is competence? How we define it, measure it, and who we deem worthy of passing judgment all derive from the institutional structures she critiques. At the same time, our notions of competence influence the structures themselves, shaping everything from expectations and rewards to how we think about time.
Taking Kerber’s call to “re-envision how the profession is embodied” quite literally, I propose unpacking academic ideas of competence by using the perspective of disability studies. This feisty interdisciplinary field more developed by our colleagues in literature departments builds on scholarship in gender, class, race, and sexuality to offer a full interrogation of how societies understand difference and define progress.1 Rather than view disability as an isolated pathology that befalls certain unfortunate individuals, the field invites scholars to explore how it influences social relationships and defines hierarchies. More than another “Other” to add to a growing list of oppressed groups in order to be politically correct, disability lies at the root of gender and race inequities. As disability historian Douglas Baynton points out, “[N]ot only has it been considered justifiable to treat disabled people unequally, but the concept of disability has been used to justify discrimination against other groups by attributing disability to them.”2 People against women’s suffrage often cited women’s physical and mental incapacities, while those in favor claimed that women were unfairly disabled by being denied that right. Because gender inequality has such strong links to disability, Kerber’s critique thus can and should be taken further.
Disability studies offers a perspective for understanding how academics have internalized especially ableist notions of competence grounded in late-industrial capitalism. Consider the qualities our discipline most associates with proven ability, itself a loaded term: rationality, logic, stamina, productivity, efficiency, ambition, thoroughness, independence, ingenuity, creativity (within reason), reliability, good humor, and collegiality. While these values each have their merits, nearly all of them can easily be linked to the socio-economic system many scholars critique in their work. “Measuring up,” “pulling one’s full weight,” and countless other expressions we use to evaluate our colleagues bear the unmistakable imprint of industrial capitalism’s unrelenting insistence for workers that reflect value-laden notions of fitness and punctuality. Once we embark on the tenure track (note the industrial imagery), we commit to producing certain quantities within a regimented period of time, not unlike factory workers who punch clocks. The academic division of labor (and prestige) between research and teaching reflects the capitalist world’s divisions between production and consumption, replete with implicit public (masculine, research) and private (feminine, teaching) spheres. And under what other socio-economic system would scholarly knowledge be assigned “value” on the “job market” according to “productivity,” “output,” and “ability to generate enrollment numbers”? (pp. 162-163).
Jago, B. J. (2002, December). Chronicling an academic depression. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 31(6), 729-757.
This autoethnographic story chronicles the author’s recent struggle with major depression. Grounded in narrative theory, utilizing the methodology of emotional introspection, and written as a layered account, this personal narrative explores mental illness within the context of the academy. The story considers a variety of issues including identity and the social construction of self, medical discourse and the canonical story of depression, academic research and the tenure process, and the interrelationships between personal and professional experience.
Leuschner, E. (2006). Body damage: Dis-figuring the academic in academic fiction. In L. M. Cooks & K. LeBesco (Eds.), The Pedagogy of the Teacher’s Body [Special Issue]. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 28(3&4), 339-354.
“Contemporary academic fiction features a plethora of characters, male and female, identified by a bodily defect or medical malady as a primary character trait. These representations of the damaged college professor have joined other popular academic stereotypes such as the absent-minded professor, the lecherous professor, and the sadistic professor, typically male images that have been tamed and domesticated, becoming part and parcel of academic life, accepted and laughed away. The trope of the ‘damaged professor,’ on the other hand, rather than a simple quirk, plays into a deeper characterization of the professoriate as a palpable symptom of the institutional and social critique explored by the academic novel. This essay first examines the representation of academic life in four examples: John Williams’s Stoner (1965), Margaret Edson’s Wit (1999), Richard Russo’s Straight Man (1997), and Francine Prose’s Blue Angel (2000). It then situates them within recent work in disability studies, in particular David T. Mitchell’s concept of narrative prosthesis, in order to relate their significance to recent and continued critiques of the university” (pp. 340-341).
Lewiecki-Wilson, C., & Brueggemann, B. J. (2007). Disability and the teaching of writing: A critical source book. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Disability and the Teaching of Writing brings together both ground-breaking new work and important foundational texts at the intersection of disability and composition studies. With practical suggestions for applying concepts to the classroom, this sourcebook helps instructors understand the issues involved in not only teaching students with disabilities but in teaching with and about disability as well.
Milner, L. A. (2011). Voice giving (way). In J. Duffy & M. Yeageau (Eds.), Disability and Rhetoric [Special issue]. Disability Studies Quarterly, 31(3). Retrieved from: http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1681/1591.
This feminist, embodied narrative explores the shame, blame, and desire that accompany a professor’s diagnosis of disabled body and speech and the paradoxical importance and near impossibility of reclaiming her voice. The writer resists the traditional story arc and avoids the rhetorical patterns of triumph, horror, conversion, and nostalgia found in many disability narratives. Aiming for what Couser (2008) calls a “rhetoric of emancipation,” she challenges stereotypical attitudes toward women with chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome (CFIDS) by offering “testimonio,” a politicized narrative of growth and transformation that connects with and advocates for, in this case, CFIDS sufferers and sexual abuse survivors. She describes how writing her experience of disabling illness for publication has enabled her to testify in court on behalf of others who suffer in silence and has led to a more peaceful way of being, rather than always doing—a necessary shift for those who navigate daily the conflict between participating fully and resting enough to avoid serious relapse.
Mossman, M. (2002). Visible disability in the college classroom. College English, 64(6), 645-659.
Mossman explores the significance of his body in one aspect of his profession. Specifically, he investigates how disability is discovered, constructed and performed in a certain type of cultural practice, that is, in a postmodern undergraduate college classroom.
Myers, K. R. (Ed.). (2007). Illness in the academy: A collection of pathographies by academics. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
Illness in the Academy investigates the deep-seated, widespread belief among academics and medical professionals that lived experiences outside the workplace should not be sacrificed to the ideal of objectivity those academic and medical professions so highly value. The 47 selections in this collection illuminate how academics bring their intellectual and creative tools, skills, and perspectives to bear on experiences of illness. The selections cross genres as well as bridge disciplines and cultures.
Pfeiffer, D., & Kassaye, W. W. (1991). Student evaluations and faculty members with a disability. Disability & Society, 6(3), 247-251.
Resumes of hypothetical prospective faculty members were distributed to a sample of 307 university students. They were systematically manipulated as to whether the candidate had a disability. The students were asked to rate the hypothetical prospective faculty members on the basis of teaching and professional characteristics as well as whether they would sign up for a class with them and would recommend hiring them. In terms of teaching characteristics the students were more positive toward the disabled hypothetical prospective faculty members than the non-disabled. It appears that if hired, a faculty member with a disability will start at a level of student acceptance the same as or higher than that of one without a disability. One of the purposes of an affirmative action program is to bring in the protected group on the same terms as others and this purpose appears to be achievable in regard to disability.
Pritchard, G. (2010). Disabled people as culturally relevant teachers. Journal of Social Inclusion, 1(1), 43-51. Retrieved from: http://www104.griffith.edu.au/index.php/
inclusion/article/viewFile/168/313.
This paper contends that disabled teachers are in such short supply as to be invisible even amongst minority teachers from already vastly marginalised populations. This is not simply because discriminatory practices are embedded within employment policies of educational systems, but deeply held socio-cultural attitudes also prevent disabled people accessing and attaining basic and later, higher levels of academic achievement. The central argument here is a simple one; disabled people as teachers offer a unique knowledge standpoint, challenge the animosity of dominant cultural beliefs around disability as analogous with passivity or non-achieving, and provide a source of resistance, solace and resolution for students they teach. Disabled people as educators enact exemplary pedagogic justice and socially inclusive practice. The aim of this paper is to explore the benefits to students and places of higher education alike of embracing both the person and the role of the teacher with disability as culturally relevant educators.
Saks, E. R. (2008). The center cannot hold: My journey through madness. New York, NY: Hyperion.
Elyn Saks is a success by any measure: she’s an endowed professor at the prestigious University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She has managed to achieve this in spite of being diagnosed as schizophrenic and given a “grave” prognosis — and suffering the effects of her illness throughout her life.
Saks was only eight, and living an otherwise idyllic childhood in sunny 1960s Miami, when her first symptoms appeared in the form of obsessions and night terrors. But it was not until she reached Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar that her first full-blown episode, complete with voices in her head and terrifying suicidal fantasies, forced her into a psychiatric hospital.
Saks would later attend Yale Law School where one night, during her first term, she had a breakdown that left her singing on the roof of the law school library at midnight. She was taken to the emergency room, force-fed antipsychotic medication, and tied hand-and-foot to the cold metal of a hospital bed. She spent the next five months in a psychiatric ward.
So began Saks’s long war with her own internal demons and the equally powerful forces of stigma. Today she is a chaired professor of law who researches and writes about the rights of the mentally ill. She is married to a wonderful man.
In The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks discusses frankly and movingly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, and the voices in her head insisting she do terrible things, as well as the many obstacles she overcame to become the woman she is today. It is destined to become a classic in the genre.
Schneider, K. (2005). Disability and academe: Views from both sides of the teacher’s desk. Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, 1(4), 53-55.
Personal history of going through higher education as a blind person and a thirty year career of teaching, counseling, supervising and administrating is used to illustrate changes and constants in the ways academe deals with a disability.
Steinberg, A. G., Iezzoni, L. I., Conill, A., & Stineman, M. (2002). Reasonable accommodations for medical faculty with disabilities. JAMA, 288(24), 3147-3154.
An unknown number of medical school faculty have disabilities, and their experiences have generally escaped notice and scrutiny. Although most medical schools offer long-term insurance and extended leaves of absence for disability, relatively few have policies explicitly addressing accommodations for faculty with disabilities as they perform teaching, research, and clinical duties. We discuss accommodating active medical school faculty with disabilities, drawing on University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine initiatives exploring the concerns of faculty with sensory and physical disabilities. Anecdotal reports suggest that many faculty, fearing reprisals, resist seeking job accommodations such as those mandated in the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Although some faculty with disabilities have found supportive academic mentors, others report that lax institutional enforcement of ADA requirements, including physical access problems, demonstrates a tepid commitment to disabled staff. Potentially useful job accommodations include adjusting timelines for promotion decisions; reassessing promotions requirements that inherently require extensive travel; improving physical access to teaching, research, and clinical sites; and modifying clinical and teaching schedules. Faculty with disabilities bring identical intellectual and collegial benefits to medical schools as their nondisabled counterparts. In addition, they may offer special insights into how chronic illness and impairments affect daily life.
Tidwell, R. (2004). The “invisible” faculty member: The university professor with a hearing disability. Higher Education, 47(2), 197-210.
This article reviews the characteristics of age-related hearing loss and discusses the consequences of hearing loss for senior professors at our universities and colleges. It presents some of the strategies, for use by the hearing-impaired and the non-hearing-impaired, to adapt successfully to age-related hearing impairments. Examples are cited for the classroom and for the general university environment. By commenting on her personal experiences as a senior faculty member, the author hopes to illuminate some important issues raised when a professor has impaired hearing.
Valle, J. W., Solis, S., Volpitta, D., & Connor, D. J. (2004). The disability closet: Teachers with learning disabilities evaluate the risks and benefits of coming out. Equity & Excellence in Education, 37(1), 4-17.
This study investigates the factors that influence whether teachers with learning disabilities (LD) choose to disclose their disability status within public school settings. Four special education teachers who self-identify as having LD identify and clarify the complex, ongoing issues that disability disclosure raises in educational environments. Through narrative, these teachers describe their self-negotiated decisions about why, how, when, and to whom to disclose. Using the metaphor of the closet, we make connections between the experiences of people labeled as having learning disabilities and the experiences of people who are gay exploring their similar positioning in the mainstream as individuals who evaluate the risks and benefits of coming out. Drawing upon the emic perspective of teachers with LD, implications for public schools and teacher education programs are discussed.
Vance, M. L. (Ed.). (2007). Disabled faculty and staff in a disabling society: Multiple identities in higher education. Huntersville, NC: Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD).
In this compelling anthology, 33 higher education professionals share personal stories, as well as relevant research associated with how they juggled both professional and personal needs. The psychological and physical barriers imposed on them were far more limiting to them than their impairments. To be judged according to medical diagnosis and not by professional standards, was unreasonable. Yet it still happens every day. Despite the challenges the writers faced, and continue to face, they see through the murky haze a brighter future and hope that their writings will play a productive role in increasing society’s acceptance of differences. It is for this reason that they have joined together to compile this book, so that the readers may learn from their accumulated experiences.
Vogel, G., & Sharoni, V. (2001). ‘My success as a teacher amazes me each and every day’ – Perspectives of teachers with learning disabilities. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 15(5), 479-495.
The employment of teachers with learning disabilities has been an issue debated in many countries as well as within the Israeli educational establishment. Structured interviews were conducted with 12 Israeli teachers with learning disabilities in order to understand how these teachers perceive their disability and its impact on them as children, as students in higher education settings and as teachers. The data were analysed utilising primarily qualitative methodology. Findings were similar to those of studies conducted in England and the USA. The participants viewed themselves as successful teachers, despite objective difficulties and painful memories of past experiences that still lead to a fragile self‐image. They viewed their own learning disabilities as having a positive impact on their professional work. Schools that provide a supportive and accepting atmosphere for teachers with learning disabilities will be a model for a truly inclusive society.
Wangeman, M., Mahosky, K., McDermott, J., & Anderson, T. (2011). Teaching using mediated communication at a university. In J. L. Brunson & M. E. Loeb (Eds.), Mediated Communication [Special Issue]. Disability Studies Quarterly, 31(4). Retrieved from: http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1728/0.
This article will discuss teaching using mediated communication and the advantages to students of this experience in their initial exposure to disability studies. I am an instructor for an Introduction to Disability Studies class at Northern Arizona University (NAU). Given my speech disability, I’m not your average instructor; I use an alternative mode of communication, or mediated communication, to communicate and, so, to teach at the university level. My two main communication methods include a letter board (accessed with a head-pointer and the use of an interpreter), and a speech device. The letter board is an array of letters, numbers and most frequently used words. My interpreter re-voices the letters or words that I indicate using a pointer attached to a bicycle helmet that I wear. My speech device, the ECOpoint™, is an eye-gaze system; the letter or word on the display screen upon which I focus is selected and spoken aloud. With this form of mediated communication, I do not require an interpreter. I use both methods of communication in class. This article will include the perspectives of my co-teacher, several students and my interpreter about the use of mediated communication to teach the introductory course of the new Disability Studies Minor at NAU. A co-teaching arrangement has allowed me to take a direct role in creating and delivering content foundational to disability studies. Also discussed will be the advantages of one–to-one interviews that I conduct with each of my students, as well as the overall instructional value of utilizing mediated communication in university classrooms, particularly in the disability studies field.
Watson-Gegeo, K. A. (2005). Teaching to transform and the dark side of “being professional.” ReVision, 28(2), 43-48.
Watson-Gegeo recounts how her disability has inspired her and her students to transgress the norms of conduct by which the academy reproduces oppressive structures. She also critiques professionalism and challenges those who would revision higher education to contemplate the dark side of being professional as they map the new terrain ahead.