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APA Tip of the Day: Changing sentence final punctuation in quotes “The punctuation mark at the end of a sentence may be changed to fit the syntax” (APA, 2010, p. 172). This means that you can do things like getting rid of the final period or question mark at the end of a quote without indicating this change.

APA Example From: The punctuation mark at the end of a sentence may be changed to fit the syntax. To: “The punctuation mark at the end of a sentence may be changed to fit the syntax” (APA, 2010, p. 172).

Announcements 1.Bring a draft of your current work on your final essays to class next week. You will have time to work on that collaboratively, so please come prepared. 2.Make an appointment ASAP to meet with me with any questions you have about upcoming assignments or class topics/concepts – my appointments book well in advance (especially Fridays).

Quick questions or quandaries?

The Social Construction of Disability in Special Education March 19, 2015 Today’s Readings: Rao (2000), Mehan et al (1986) and your choice of a Kliewer reading.

My purpose in students understanding institutional involvement in the construction of disability is for teachers and others who make up social systems, such as schools, to understand their own complicity in the social construction of disability. How do your own words and actions contribute to negative perspectives on disability?

Underlying Assumptions of Critical Theory: Power is the basis of society. Certain groups are privileged over others. All thought is mediated by power relations that are socially and historically constituted. Information always involves acts of human judgment and interpretation.

More Assumptions of Critical Theory: Language is central to the formation of subjectivity. Oppression (race, class, gender, age, for example) is reproduced when subordinates accept their status or situation as natural, necessary, and/or inevitable.

Final Assumptions of Critical Theory: There is no such thing as neutrality. Traditional research ideas of internal and external validity are replaced by critical trustworthiness. adapted from:

“Critical theory is critical in two senses: it brings to our consciousness oppression of which we may or may not have been aware, and it calls for ‘criticism of life’ to resist and change the existing system of domination and exploitation.” Kirkpatrick, Katsiaficas, & Emery,

(McLaren, 1994, p. 182) “Hegemony refers to the maintenance of domination not by the sheer exercise of force but primarily through consensual social practices, social forms, and social structures produced in specific sites such as the church, the state, the school, the mass media, the political system, and the family…”

“Hegemony is a struggle in which the powerful win the consent of those who are oppressed, with the oppressed unknowingly participating in their own oppression.” (McLaren, 1994, p. 182)

What is the purpose of schooling?

To what extent do you believe that schooling plays a role in social status attainment?

(Ferguson, 1987, p. 53) “The aim of reform has always been stated as the achievement of economic productivity and self- reliance for people who otherwise would be dependent on society’s handouts and production... If the criterion of success is economic utility and productivity, then some will unavoidably remain economically useless and unproductive.”

“The minority group perspective is conceptually ill-equipped to challenge the structural denial of full community participation in a way that does not reinforce the continuing neglect of those most severely disabled.” (Ferguson, 1987, p. 53)

“A new standard of participation and contribution for very severely handicapped people that values mere presence as much as productivity is needed.” (Ferguson, 1987, p. 53)

Maxine Greene (1986, p. 72) Wholly unlike "selling" or drilling or training, teaching is oriented to provoking persons to care about what they are coming to understand, to attend to their situations with solitude, to be mindful, to be concerned, to be fully present and alive. Democratic education, certainly, involves provoking persons to get up from their seats... to say something in their own voices, against their own biographies and in terms of what they cherish in their shared lives, what they authentically hold dear…

It involves getting them to leave their assigned places in the crowds and even in the marches, and to come together freely in their plurality. It means creating an "in between" among them, a space where they can continue appearing as authentic individuals, each with a distinctive perspective on what they have come to hold in common, a space where something new can find expression and be explored and elaborated on, where it can grow. It is when people become challengers, when they take initiatives, that they begin to create the kinds of spaces where dialogue can take place and freedom can appear. Maxine Greene (1986, p. 72)

Quick Write: In what ways (other than the specific examples provided in the readings) do you see the institution of schooling in the U.S. as contributing to a particular construction of disability?

Individual/Small Group Activity: The readings addressed three educational contexts in which disability is/can be constructed (team meetings, curriculum, parent interactions), with specific examples of how this process can take place. Individually, you need to identify specific behaviors that you have engaged in, within each of these three contexts (or related ones, for those of you who work in non-school contexts) that (1) construct disability in a positive light and (2) need your attention in order to provide a more positive construction. In small groups, share your +/- behaviors and develop a plan for improvement.

Looking ahead… What does the social construction of disability imply about inclusion?

Please take a minute for the minute paper. And don’t forget to turn your phone back on.