Reimagining Disability & Inclusive Education | Jan Wilson | TEDxUniversityofTulsa

Summary

Highlights

• Zoe, a child with autism, struggled in a regular classroom due to lack of support. 🤯
• Her story underscores the systemic failures in current educational practices. 🚫
• Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offers a model to accommodate diverse learners. 📚
• UDL emphasizes diverse teaching methods tailored to individual learning styles. 🎨
• The Social Model of Disability redefines disability as an environmental issue, not individual. 🔍

Key Takeaways

• Inclusive education needs systemic transformation to truly accommodate all learners. 🔄
• Traditional educational models often leave students like Zoe unsupported. 🏫
• Universal Design for Learning benefits all students by embracing diversity. 🌟
• UDL principles focus on reducing barriers and enhancing accessibility for everyone. 🛠️
• The Social Model of Disability sees disability as a product of unaccommodating environments. 🌍

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction to Zoe's Story The chapter introduces Zoe, a bright and quirky 9-year-old girl. Zoe has a fondness for Laal La Loopsy dolls, cookie dough ice cream, chess, and the color pink. Zoe was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of five, but she has yet to fully comprehend her diagnosis.
• 01:30 - 04:30: Challenges with Inclusive Education This chapter discusses the challenges faced in inclusive education through the experiences of a student named Zoe and her parents. Initially, Zoe's parents enrolled her in a neighborhood public school believing that legal provisions would ensure necessary support for her social and academic achievement. Contrarily, they were faced with an unexpected situation where Zoe was placed in a regular classroom without any additional support or accommodations because the school principal admitted that the district lacked resources.
• 04:30 - 08:00: The Social Model of Disability Zoe, a student with behavioral challenges, experiences regular violent outbursts in her classroom. Her teacher, overwhelmed, gives up on trying to educate her while her classmates become increasingly scared. Zoe is often left unsupervised and manages to slip out of her classroom unnoticed, wandering the school's hallways. This highlights a lack of adequate support and adaptation in her educational environment, illustrating a barrier addressed by the Social Model of Disability, which emphasizes societal adjustments to meet the needs of all individuals.
• 08:00 - 14:00: Universal Design for Learning (UDL) The chapter discusses the transition of Zoe, a student, to a specialized educational program. After facing challenges, Zoe's parents successfully transferred her to an elementary school in their district that offers a full-time self-contained special education program. The program is run by a team of highly trained staff. Approximately a year and a half later, Zoe is reported to be thriving in this new environment.
• 14:00 - 16:30: Zoe's Unique Perspective and Conclusion Zoe is excelling academically, participating in extracurricular activities, and improving her emotional regulation, along with forming friendships.

Reimagining Disability & Inclusive Education | Jan Wilson | TEDxUniversityofTulsa Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 this is Zoe she is a bright precocious quirky 9-year-old who loves laal La Loopsy dolls cookie dough ice cream chess and the color pink Zoe was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when she was five but she really didn't understand and the
• 00:30 - 01:00 meaning of disability until her parents enrolled her in their neighborhood public school on the assumption that by law the school would provide a range of appropriate services to ensure her social and academic success so they were unprepared to say the least for the school's placement of Zoe in a regular classroom without any supports or accommodations because as the principal openly acknowledged the school district did not not have the
• 01:00 - 01:30 funds to provide them by the sixth week of the semester Zoe was having regular violent outbursts in a classroom with one completely flumix teacher who simply abandoned all attempts at educating Zoe and 25 increasingly terrified students she was left unsupervised and so would often just slip out of her classroom undetected and wonder about the school hallways until on one occasion she made
• 01:30 - 02:00 it all the way to the parking lot before being stopped by her mother who happened to be in the school Lobby that day after a lengthy and costly battle Zoe's parents managed to have her transferred to the only the only Elementary School in their District to offer a full-time self-contained special education program run by a team of highly trained staff and now about a year and a half later Zoe's thriving
• 02:00 - 02:30 she's earning excellent grades participating in after school activities learning better to regulate her emotions and even making friends Zoe's story is all too familiar to students with disabilities and their caregivers as Zoe's mother it is intimately familiar to me when I shared this story at an academic conference a few months ago I was rather dis made when the consensus
• 02:30 - 03:00 from the scholars presence seem to be well I guess inclusive education is not always the answer for children with disabilities I don't think that this was the moral of my story you know certainly I recognize that attempts to pursue inclusion that is the practice of educating children with and without disabilities together in the regular classroom without any regard for individual need can be just as harmful in some ways as earlier Tendencies to
• 03:00 - 03:30 keep children with disabilities segregated from their classmates yet I am also convinced that with the implementation of Universal Design for Learning Zoe's education in this regular environment would have been appropriate and her chances at success much greater in fact Universal Design for Learning not only has the potential to radically transform the meaning of inclusive education
• 03:30 - 04:00 but the very concept of disability in 1975 Congress passed and has renewed several times since then a law that became known as the individuals with disabilities Education Act or idea which ensures that children with disabilities receive a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment usually the regular classroom and since then debates have swirled
• 04:00 - 04:30 about the benefits of inclusive education not just for children with disabilities but also for their peers and their teachers proponents of inclusion stress the value of all children and their right to be included regardless of their individual differences and abilities critics of inclusion however argue that certain children with disabilities can't learn through traditional teaching methods and that they need more individualized
• 04:30 - 05:00 instruction from certified special education teachers usually in special education settings but by far the most ubiquitous criticism of inclusion emphasizes the negative impact on so-called non-disabled students for example a 2012 study published by a leading education Journal Express concern for regular ed students whose classrooms at claim climed are being adapted to meet the
• 05:00 - 05:30 needs of others and it questioned the fairness of allocating funds to provide resources that benefit only about 12% of the student population this study reflects the widespread assumption that the regular classroom is rightly the province of non-disabled students and some sort of neutral value-free space that students with disabilities invade and dis rupt
• 05:30 - 06:00 through their very presence and their costly need for adaptation what this view fails to recognize is that this space far from neutral is actually constructed According to some sort of mythical able-bodied neurotypical Norm that neither reflects nor accommodates the wide range of diverse Learners within it regardless of whether these Learners have been diagnosed with a disability
• 06:00 - 06:30 and you know judging from the disproportionate placement of culturally and linguistically diverse and minority and male students in disability categories and programs it's also a space that makes some pretty broad assumptions based on dominant discourses of gender and race and culture another troubling aspect of this inclusion debate reflected in the study is the failure to recognize that again these so-called non disabled students
• 06:30 - 07:00 actually benefit from the supports and accommodations designed to assist students with disabilities in fact by making a distinction between the regular ed students and others this study draws rigid but false divisions between those considered able-bodied the norm and those considered disabled that is anything that deviates from the norm in other words
• 07:00 - 07:30 our built environment our policies even our attitudes make very little room for human variation and in fact are modeled on even privilege bodies and Minds deemed fit capable intelligent and even beautiful and therefore any bodies and Minds that do not move or look or act or think in ways according to these Norms are automatically rendered
• 07:30 - 08:00 disabled disability Scholars attempt to challenge and dismantle these sorts of discourses by reimagining disability as a wide ranging Continuum that encompasses all bodies and minds and through a social model that sees disability not as some sort of individual problem or Affliction needing cure
• 08:00 - 08:30 the old medical model of disability but rather largely the product of environments and attitudes and policies that fail to include the vast array of human particularities so in other words the goal is not to try to adapt diverse bodies and Minds to rigid existing structures but to radically reimagine these structures to make them fit diverse bodies and Minds The Social
• 08:30 - 09:00 model of disability and this social model also recognizes the dependency of all individuals on external supports Technologies and interventions to survive to flourish or simply to make life easier for example so-called non-disabled individuals commonly rely on support such as glasses computers and Ladders even warm
• 09:00 - 09:30 clothing on a cold day and nobody thinks twice about these uses its only supports used by so-called disabled individuals things such as interpreters and wheelchairs service animals psychotropic drugs that are considered accommodations expensive unnecessary even burdensome Universal Design for Learning is the best example the application of
• 09:30 - 10:00 the social model of disability to educational approaches it's based on neuroscientific evidence that individuals who vary widely in their backgrounds and abilities and motivations have different learning needs and different learning styles Universal Design for Learning means the creation and implementation of teaching materials and methods that reduce barriers in the learning environment and that make learning accessible for all
• 10:00 - 10:30 students this is accomplished through the three udl guidelines the first to offer students multiple methods of representation of course information through multiple formats not just text but digital formats and Audi books charts and graphs and pictures music materials that connect a students backgrounds and languages and experiences
• 10:30 - 11:00 second to offer students multiple means for expressing what they know not just written expression but verbal expression through performance the creation of artistic Works through website design or Film Production and third to offer students multiple means of Engagement for motivating them to learn things such as collaborative work or group projects through role playing or games service
• 11:00 - 11:30 learning that connects knowledge inside of the classroom to life outside of it so unlike traditional methods that attempt to adapt diverse Learners to typically inflexible curricula and materials Universal Design for Learning proactively creates these materials at the outset to make them adapt to the needs of diverse Learners that social model
• 11:30 - 12:00 it recognizes the unfairness even the futility of using one approach one set of materials one form of assessment that tend to privilege one type of learner as a quotation attributed to Einstein cautions if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid my Journey with
• 12:00 - 12:30 Zoe through the often frustrating terrain of inclusive education has generated my outrage over how little our educational institutions truly accommodate the needs of diverse learners but it's also forced me to recognize the limitations of my own teaching approaches I had long prided myself as a disability Advocate and Ally but it never really occurred to me that my view
• 12:30 - 13:00 of accommodations was in many ways inherently flawed it assumed that accommodations were something from which only students with disabilities benefited it offered accommodations on a caseby casee basis always after the fact never built into the curriculum from the start and worst of all it made a lot of ableist assumptions about my students abilities to see and hear and think and
• 13:00 - 13:30 understand English organize and attend and as I began to redesign my courses using udl principles and guidelines a process I'm still very much involved in by the way I began to recognize the tremendous possibilities of applying udl not just to primary and secondary education but to Higher Learning as well and this has inspired me to work toward the creation of an Institute for a Universal Design Design for Learning which I Envision as a
• 13:30 - 14:00 campus-wide resource to educate K through2 teachers and college faculty students majoring in education udl principles and guidelines and also to connect them to the technological systems the curricular resources and even instructional practices that make learning accessible for everyone ultimately Universal Design for Learning
• 14:00 - 14:30 locates value in Productions of knowledge that have been traditionally ignored or marginalized even denigrated I was reminded of this recently while watching Zoe work on an assessment with her speech therapist and the therapist was showing Zoe a series of pictures and asking her to form story arcs based on the information that the pictures collectively Illustrated the correct subject of one of the pictures for example was a mother
• 14:30 - 15:00 nervously waving goodbye to her son who was boarding a school bus for the first time but instead Zoe grew fixated on the lower corner of the picture where a cat sat looking rather forlornly in her view and despite her therapist insistence that her Focus was incorrect Zoe refused to alter her gaze and instead continue to worry about the cat to whom did the cat belong she
• 15:00 - 15:30 wondered clearly this cat was hungry who would feed the cat and as her therapists grew visibly more frustrated I stifled my impulse to laugh after all why was Zoe's concern for the cat wrong or misguided why was attention to the mother and son more valued and perhaps most importantly who gets to make this decision Zoe tendency to create
• 15:30 - 16:00 Knowledge from the margins allowed her to form new meaning about what she was seeing that disrupted and challenged the picture's Master narratives in much the same way Universal Design for Learning gives students and teachers the power to form new discourses that radically transform existing ideologies and institutions and that create new multiple understandings of the correct way to see and hear and
• 16:00 - 16:30 think and know thank you [Applause]