Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
29th November 2022
It’s the socially created barriers that disable students, not the conditions they live with
Disability advocate and 2022 Australian of the year Dylan Alcott recently said "it's up to all of us in society to create a space where people with disability feel included”.
This is a good point, but we all come to know disability and inclusion in different ways.
I am a disabled academic who teaches and conducts research about disability and inclusion in the field of teacher education.
Part of my work is to support others to recognise and dismantle barriers to the equitable participation of certain groups from learning.
To do this, I maintain that it’s primarily important to address how educators understand the concept of disability, and its relationship to teaching and learning.
We might refer to this as a person’s orientation to disability. This underpins how they think, speak and act in relation to a person's differences.
Many students with disabilities still receive inequitable schooling
The ways educators orientate to disability is crucial to how they ensure students are not excluded from any aspect of educational participation because of the conditions they live with.
An educator’s orientation to disability is also just as important when they are designing and delivering inclusive curriculum.
https://www.abc.net.au/education/socially-created-barriers-to-inclusion-are-what-disable-students/14104632