Angharad E. Beckett

‘Challenging disabling attitudes, building an inclusive society’: considering the role of education in encouraging non‐disabled children to develop positive attitudes towards disabled people

In the United Kingdom, the introduction of the Disability Equality Duty 2006 has provided a new window of opportunity to promote the idea that education has a role to play in changing non‐disabled children/young people’s attitudes towards disabled people. This article explores the issues raised by the application of the Disability Equality Duty to English schools. The remainder of the article then seeks to ‘map the territory’ for future research into the role that education might play in challenging disabling attitudes and building an inclusive society.

‘Away with the fairies?’ Disability within primary‐age children's literature

This article outlines the findings of a new study that explores the portrayal of disability within a sample of the primary‐age childrens literature most readily available to UK schools. The kind of literature to which children are exposed is likely to influence their general perceptions of social life. How disability is handled by authors is therefore important from the standpoint of disability equality. Findings suggest that whilst there are some good examples of inclusive literature ‘out there’, discriminatory language and/or negative stereotypes about disability continue to be present in a range of more contemporary childrens books. Clearly, more still needs to be done to ensure that schools and teachers are provided with information relating to the best examples of inclusion literature and efforts must continue to be made to inform authors, publishers and illustrators about how to approach the issue of disability.

The social model of disability as an oppositional device

This article engages with debates about the UK Disabled People’s Movement’s ‘Big Idea’ – the social model of disability – positioning this as an ‘oppositional device’. This concept is adapted from the work of the art theorist and activist Brian Holmes, elaborated using insights from Foucault and others. The model’s primary operation is introducing contingency into the present, facilitating disabled people’s resistance-practices. We recognise, however, that the device can operate in a disciplinary manner when adopted by a machinery of government. Whilst our primary goal is to understand the character and operation of the social model, by providing a more general definition of an oppositional device as the concrete operation of technologies of power, we also propose a concept potentially useful for the analysis of the resistance-practices of activists involved in a wide variety of struggles. This concept may thus have implications for wider social and political analysis.

Non-disabled children’s ideas about disability and disabled people

This article discusses findings from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study exploring non-disabled children’s ideas about disability. This represents the first in-depth sociological investigation of children’s ideas about disabled people as members of wider society. Data are presented from focus group discussions with children aged 6–7 and 10–11. The article draws upon William H. Sewell Jr’s theorizing of structure and agency and, in particular, employs his concept of ‘cultural schemas’. The article explores non-disabled children’s enactment of various cultural schemas relating to disability and argues that although they are capable of questioning, even transforming, schemas, they are primarily engaged in enacting a series of ‘hegemonic’ schemas that maintain their privileged position as non-disabled people. The article concludes by urging schools and educationalists to do more to encourage non-disabled children to think differently and positively about disabled people.

Promoting positive attitudes towards disabled people: definition of, rationale and prospects for anti-disablist education

This article outlines the findings of an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study exploring the role of English state primary schools in promoting positive attitudes towards disabled people. Data emerging from a survey of schools and interviews with teachers are presented. The article considers progress made by schools against particular aspects of the Disability Equality Duty 2006. The project was underpinned by a working model of anti-disablist education resulting from a ‘conversation’ between various models of anti-oppressive education and disability politics. It explores the rationale for a ‘courageous’ form of anti-disablist education, definition of this, schools’ engagement in this type of practice and challenges to promoting such an ideal.

Anti-oppressive pedagogy and disability: possibilities and challenges

This article connects theories of ‘anti-oppressive education’ with Disability Studies perspectives. It outlines and critically analyses a typology of three possible pedagogies for teaching about disability as a form of oppression and disrupting the relations in which disability resides. This typology is employed to examine the approach UK schools are currently recommended to take to teaching about disability. It is concluded that UK schools are being advised to take an approach that whilst at best benign is insufficiently radical. The article explores the potential of and for more ‘radical’ approaches, opening up new avenues for a transformative ‘post-Critical Pedagogy’ that seeks to unshackle the possibilities for what a life can be/do and where a life might go.

Together Through Play: Facilitating Inclusive Play Through Participatory Design

Play has an important role in the development of physical and social skills of children (Piaget 1929), and is recognised as a fundamental human right (cf Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child).

Foucault, social movements and heterotopic horizons: rupturing the order of things

Abstract In this article, we explore and develop the utility for social movement studies of Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of heterotopia. Informed by Foucault’s theorizing, we propose a heuristic typology of social movement heterotopias. Five heterotopia ‘types’ are considered: ‘contained’, ‘mobile’, ‘cloud’, ‘encounter’ and ‘rhizomic’. Each has particular attributes, but all challenge normal, routine politics. They do so by being, from the perspective of state and capital, either in the ‘wrong’ place, moving in the ‘wrong’ way, or involving the ‘wrong’ connections, affinities or organization. These are constructed-types, proposed for the purpose of description, comparison and prediction. These social movement heterotopias are different types of space that facilitate practices of resistance and transgression. We situate Foucault’s writing on heterotopia at a pivotal moment in his intellectual career, when he became increasingly concerned with how particular mechanisms for modulating the creative force of resistance/power are invented, the types of bodies they craft and the politics they make possible. We propose an interpretation of heterotopia that relates it to his later work on power, resistance and freedom, and the interplay of his ideas with those of Gilles Deleuze.

Moving Beyond Boundaries: When User-Centered Design meets Sociology

In this paper, we consider the potential of combining design, engineering and sociological perspectives with user perspectives, as part of a user-centered, inclusive design process. Our particular interest lies in the design of inclusive toys and games that disabled and non-disabled children can play together and which foster positive interactions between children across difference. We explore the challenges and opportunities associated with working in a transdisciplinary mode, where knowledge production evolves from dynamic tension between different disciplinary perspectives and those of non-academic stakeholders. We argue that the latter is of particular importance within any design process that seeks to provide accessibility and empower users. Such transdisciplinarity involves an upstream approach to the involvement of non-academic interests in the design process and knowledge production, rather than limiting the engagement of/with users to the dissemination end point stage of research (Barry, forthcoming). The paper draws upon two case studies of projects conducted by the authors. Both projects involve the use of co-operative inquiry [14] with children and we seek to extract the pedagogical implications of both projects for future design, including that within the field of ICT and digital technologies, with and for children.