Enhancing Diversity: Thinking Differently About Disability Clayton Keller

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Enhancing Diversity Thinking Differently About
DisabilityClayton Keller

• Disability Symposium
• Creighton University
• April 21, 2005

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Enhancing Diversity Thinking Differently About
Disability

• How can you be a teacher?
• An uphill struggle to have the issues of
  educators with disabilities recognized and
  addressed within a special education professional
  organization

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Overview Of My Talk

• Different ideas about disabilities
• Descriptions
• Implications for diversity efforts
• Fostering opportunities
• Justice
• Education
• Advice

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Ideas About Disability

• A typical or lay view
• Person disability
• Language
• The handicapped
• The blind musician
• Suffers from
• Wheelchair-bound
• Implications for diversity
• Diversity as a value doesnt honor what is viewed
  as unfortunate or missing

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Ideas About Disabilities

• An enlightened view
• Person ? disability
• Person is the same as everyone else
• Person first, then the disability
• Language
• The person with disabilities
• The teacher who is deaf
• Implications for diversity
• Diversity as a value doesnt honor what is viewed
  as the same

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Ideas About Disabilities

• An environmental view
• Person ? environment disability
• Emphasis is on changing the environment
• American Association on Mental Retardations
  classification of mental retardation focuses on
  the pattern and intensity of supports needed to
  enable a person to participate in valued settings
  and activities (http//www.aamr.org/sis/pdf/sis_o
  verview_nasddd.pdf )
• Intermittent, Limited, Extensive, Pervasive
• Implications for diversity
• Diversity as a value doesnt honor changing
  differences

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Ideas About Disabilities

• An activist and rights-based view
• Disability ? person
• Language
• Disabled person
• Implications for diversity
• All of what diversity as a value honors is present

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Ed Roberts

• Parallels in Time A History of Developmental
  Disabilities
• Minnesota Governors Council on Developmental
  Disabilities

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Creightons Mission

• Service to others, the importance of family life,
  the inalienable worth of each individual, and
  appreciation of ethnic and cultural diversity are
  core values of Creighton.
• Creightons education is directedto the
  promotion of justice.

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Fostering Opportunities

• What constitutes justice?
• This book is based on the view that while
  notions of justice have always been implicit in
  the discussion of the theoretical, policy and
  practical issues concerning the education of
  people with disabilities, these notions are
  seldom made explicit and subjected to sustained
  analysis.While there is widespread recognition
  that as a group people with disabilities have
  been subjected to social practices which are
  fundamentally unjust, there is a lack of clarity
  on what constitutes injustice and what would
  constitute a socially just community for people
  with disabilities.
• Rizvi Christensen, 1996, Disability and the
  Dilemmas of Education and Justice, p. 2

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Fostering Opportunities

• What might constitute justice in the education of
  students with disabilities at Creighton
  University?
• Such justice will not consist of
• Charity
• Service
• Such justice will require compliance with laws
  like Section 504 and the ADA

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Fostering Opportunities

• Such justice should go beyond compliance with the
  laws
• Legal compliance may not be enough
• The education should be invitational
• Anticipating needs and having many accommodations
  or supports in place normally versus solely
  providing them only when asked

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Universal Instructional Design

• Universal Design The design of products and
  environments to be usable by all people, to the
  greatest extent possible, without the need for
  adaptation or specialized design (North Carolina
  State University, Center for Universal Design)
• Universal Instructional Design A pedagogical
  analogy
• Such qualities should be built into the
  instructional design and operating systems of
  educational materials--they should not have to be
  added on later. (Orkwis McLane, 1998, p. 9)

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Fostering Opportunities

• The education should be inclusive
• Students with disabilities can see themselves,
  their lives, and their concerns in their
  education, in ways that can also be seen by
  others
• For example
• Civil rights
• Ethical debates
• Policies
• Literature
• http//www.disabilityrag.org

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Supports Within Professions

• Careers for All and Workforce Development
• American Association for the Advancement of
  Science
• http//www.aaas.org/programs/education/CareersAll/
  index.shtml
• Breaking New Ground Resource Center Cultivating
  Independence for Persons with Disabilities in
  Agriculture
• Purdue University
• http//pasture.ecn.purdue.edu/ABE/Extension/BNG/Re
  source20Center/resourcecenter.html
• Educators with Disabilities Caucus
• The Council for Exceptional Children
• http//www.cec.sped.org/diversity/edc.html

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Fostering Opportunities

• Suggestions for individuals with disabilities
  (Karp, Anderson, Keller, 1998, p. 275)
• Take control over your life
• Desire to succeed
• Strive for your goals and be persistent
• Find opportunities that best fit your goals and
  your needs
• Reframe your disability to see it as a positive
• Use learned creativity
• Construct networks for support and personal
  improvement
• Be independent and interdependent by using those
  people and resources that can help
• Ask for accommodations you need
• Use a portfolio of experiences and accomplishments

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Fostering Opportunities

• Suggestions for faculty (selected from Karp,
  Anderson, Keller, 1998, p. 277)
• Ask about each individuals conception of him- or
  herself and his or her disability
• Create a campus environment where individuals
  feel accepted
• Encourage all students to actively determine how
  they best learn and function as students and how
  to communicate that to others
• Allow students to make accommodations and
  adaptations they need
• Encourage students to be both independent and
  interdependent
• Create mentor-mentee relationships
• Assist students in building a portfolio of
  accomplishments

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Characteristics for Developing a Just Education
for Students with Disabilities at Creighton
University

• Openness to communication
• Willingness to question ones own and others
  assumptions about disabilities and education
• Creativity to generate solutions
• Courage to put solutions to appropriate tests
• Honesty to accept the results of such tests
• Adapted from Keller, Anderson, Karp, 1998, p.11