Anti-oppressive pedagogy and disability: possibilities and challenges

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• disability, education, anti-oppressive, pedagogy