Decentering and Rezoning: Podcasts as a DisCrit Method for Doing Disability Research

Abstract

Due to the dominance of ableist narratives, there is a distinct lack of diversity of participants and geographies in education research with students with disabilities. To address this lack, we developed podcasting as a method for DisCrit-informed qualitative research in the form of a pilot project for the first author’s doctoral study on the experiences of acquired disability as intersected with policy, race, gender, sexuality, religion, and nationality. Using writing as method of inquiry, in this paper, we reflect on moments of questioning, tensions, challenges, and ethical ponderings that we encountered throughout the creation of the podcast project. These tensions include questions about what digging deep means in DisCrit research, the challenges of negotiating power, ethics, and care, questioning whose stories are worth telling and who gets to tell them and, finally, the epistemological provocations we rubbed against. Specifically, we argue that the creative, digital, and culturally specific properties of podcasting offer a counterstorying approach to ableism, by generating situated knowing about living with a disability. Podcasting, as a DisCrit-informed qualitative approach, may enable researchers’ abilities to develop rich, nuanced, and detailed understandings of experiences of disabilities, across geographies, identities, and contexts.