Elisabeth De Schauwer

Recognition and difference: a collective biography

This paper opens the space of post-qualitative research through an exploration of how acts of recognition and non-recognition work on and through the bodies of individual subjects. Using stories generated in a collective biography workshop and drawing on concepts from Foucault and Butler, and also, in contrast, Barad and Deleuze, the paper explores the way these different epistemologies intra-act with ways of seeing/reading/being recognizable subjects.

‘I want support, not comments’: children's perspectives on supports in their life

Even though supports are a major part of the daily lives of children with special educational needs who participate in general education schools, little attention has been paid to how children experience supports. Six children and their peers who were interviewed appreciated supports because they remove restrictions in activities due to the impairment. However, their experiences also show how these positive supports can have negative psycho‐emotional repercussions, and are less focused on addressing disabling barriers. The childrens accounts demonstrate the ambiguous and situated nature of supports, and the need for the children to be able to direct supports as ‘chief partners’ in the inclusion process.

Shildrick’s monster: exploring a new approach to difference/disability through collective biography

Abstract Working with memories generated in a collective biography workshop on difference/disability and drawing in particular on Shildrick’s analysis of monstrosity, this article analyses the ambivalent processes through which difference is othered and abjected. The article argues that through the process of abjection we disown for ourselves whatever qualities are being categorised as monstrous, with negative effects not just on the other, but also on the self. We look at the ambivalence of ‘reclaiming the monster’. This article opens up an alternative of expanding the possibilities of being by focusing not on difference as categorical otherness, but rather difference as movement, as differenciation, or becoming.

Swimming is Never Without Risk: Opening Up on Learning Through Activism and Research

This article examines my own becoming as Elisabeth and as a researcher. It is about working as a support worker, coaching teams that are trying to realize inclusive education for a child, and my PhD process, which relies on these practices. My intention here is to unfold several aspects, blockages, possibilities, and tensions that can make sense of my messy struggle. The never-ending learning through working with people, listening to their stories, and taking responsibility are important ingredients of my engagement. It is necessary to provide insights and justify my multiple positions to avoid falling into a narcissistic trap. In doing so, I will seek help from Levinas and in concepts of Deleuze and Guattari to (re-)construct my own understanding.This article examines my own becoming as Elisabeth and as a researcher. It is about working as a support worker, coaching teams that are trying to realize inclusive education for a child, and my PhD process, which relies on these practices. My intention here is to unfold several aspects, blockages, possibilities, and tensions that can make sense of my messy struggle. The never-ending learning through working with people, listening to their stories, and taking responsibility are important ingredients of my engagement. It is necessary to provide insights and justify my multiple positions to avoid falling into a narcissistic trap. In doing so, I will seek help from Levinas and in concepts of Deleuze and Guattari to (re-)construct my own understanding.

Supports for children with disabilities in regular education classrooms: an account of different perspectives in Flanders

This paper presents the experiences and interpretations of children, parents, teachers and support persons concerning the implementation of supports in regular school environments in Flanders, Belgium. The data were gathered through observations, interviews and focus group meetings. Those multiple perspectives provide insights into the complexity of implementing supports in a regular education context. The conclusions offer some possibilities for debate and alternative ways of thinking about supports that facilitate inclusive school communities by tapping into resources such as the children, the environment, creativity and courage to leave the beaten path.

The intra-active production of normativity and difference

ABSTRACT Drawing on memory stories told in a collective biography workshop about children’s encounters with schooling, this paper experiments with re-imagining the child-student-subject as an ‘emergent intracorporeal multiplicity’ [Fritsch, K. 2015. “Desiring Disability Differently: Neoliberalism, Heterotopic Imagination and Intra-Corporeal Configurations.” Foucault Studies 19: 43–66, 51]. From the feminist new materialist perspective that the authors work with, the child is configured not as an entity prior to, or separate from, encounters with education systems, but emergent with-in them. This paper focuses on difference in human relations, and in particular on the intersections of disability and gender. It does so not in terms of essential characteristics of individuals, but as emergent, in-the-moment, with others. In focussing on the detail of lives-in-their-making, the authors ask, with Barad [2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press], if we are interested in justice, how we are to ‘understand our role in helping constitute who and what come to matter?’

Disability Studies and Social Geography Make a Good Marriage: Research on Life Trajectories of People with Intellectual Disabilities and Additional Mental Health Problems

This chapter investigates life trajectories of people with intellectual disabilities and mental health problems. The complex support questions and “difficult behavior” of this population turn out to be precursors of life admissions in specialized, residential units for people with disabilities and short-term or long-term time ins and time outs in mental health care units. Trajectories between and within different support systems and organizations are harsh day-to-day realities for people with intellectual disabilities and mental health problems. People are suspended in schools and organizations, are referred to prison or psychiatric institutions because they are supposed to be dangerous and/or mad. Due to fragmentation and little flexibility within and between care systems for people with disabilities and the mental health care system (De Groef 2002), people with intellectual disabilities and additional mental health problems experience endless trajectories in the landscape of care (Milligan and Wiles 2010).

Animating disability differently : mobilizing a heterotopian imagination

This article takes up Goodley’s challenge to explore the ways in which poststructuralist research methodologies open up new ways of thinking about encounters with disability. Working with the materiality of their own encounters with disability and the conceptual possibilities opened up in poststructuralist and new materialist thought, the six authors deconstruct the ability/disability binary through animating disability differently. They draw on memories generated in a collective biography workshop to explore the ways in which concepts, such as heterotopia, can be put to work to mobilize a humanity-in-common that is both multiple and open to differenciation, that is, to continuously becoming different.

Inclusive Education for Students with Hearing Impairment in the Regular Secondary Schools in the North-West Region of Cameroon: Initiatives and Challenges.

Abstract Although some initiatives are implemented in the education of students with hearing impairments in the regular school, challenges are still encountered in their education. This article which is part of the results from an ongoing qualitative study in the North-West region of Cameroon addresses the different initiatives and challenges involved with including students with hearing impairment in regular schools. Interviews, participant observations as well as field notes were the main instruments used in collecting data from the six teachers and six students with hearing impairments who participated in the research. Academic support, classroom placement and the way of working of the sign language interpreters were considered the major initiatives and challenges in the education of the students with hearing impairment in regular schools. It is apparent that adequate adjustments have not been made within the schools to meet the needs of the students with hearing impairments. This hence questions their actual inclusion in the regular school.

The World According to Sofie

I am Sofie. I am 11 years old. I am in the class of teacher Bart. I love shopping, playing games and horseback riding. I do a lot in class: talking, writing with the computer, asking questions and reading. I like to look around, I draw and I go swimming. I do my homework too. I know a lot already. Now and then I rest. I can come up with good stories.