International Perspectives on Teaching with Disability

Efforts to reduce discrimination and increase diversity on campuses, coupled with shrinking budgets causing administrators to devote more resources toward recruiting and retaining students with disabilities, are fuelling an explosion of research in the area of inclusive education. An important focus that has been largely neglected is the place of teachers with disabilities in academe. International Perspectives on Teaching with Disability brings together 25 multi-disciplinary scholars with disabilities from Africa, Canada, the Caribbean, the UK, Israel and the United States to share their struggles and successes in teaching with disability.
The 18 chapters are written largely from autoethnographic perspectives grounded in solid academic research but full of anecdotes and self-reflexive narratives that provide insights into the lived experiences of the authors. Woven into the narratives are discussions of the complexities of self-disclosure and self-advocacy; the varied-and often problematic-ways disability is experienced, perceived and discussed in society and in the classroom; the challenges of navigating academe with disability, the value of disability pedagogy, the positive student outcomes achieved by teaching through disability, as well as practical applications and lessons learned that will benefit educators, administrators and students preparing to become teachers.
This book is written to champion the integral place and role of disabled educators in academe. Current educators with disability will be affirmed. Those with disability aspiring to become teachers will be encouraged. Temporarily able-bodied administrators and educators will be challenged. Everyone will be informed. This book will be a welcome addition to reading lists in a wide array of academic fields including: Education, Pedagogy, Disability Studies, Human Resources Management, and Sociology.

Michael S. Jeffress is a lecturer in communication studies at The University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago. He is an active member of the Disability Issues Caucus of the National Communication Association. He has authored one title and edited two others in Routledge's Interdisciplinary Disability Studies series.

List of tables; List of contributors; Foreword Mark D. Sherry; Editor's Preface & Introduction Michael S. Jeffress; Section I: Teaching with Physical Disability; Chapter 1: Almost Passing: Using Disability Disclosure to Recalibrate Able-Bodied Bias in the Classroom Julie-Ann Scott and Kelly P. Herold; Chapter 2: Teaching on Wheels: Bringing a disability perspective into the classroom April Coughlin; Chapter 3: How Crip is Too Crip?: Re-Imagining the Presence of Disabled Professors in the Academy Nadine LeGier and Michelle Owen; Chapter 4: My Class, My Disability, My Struggle Tafadzwa Rugoho and Michael S. Jeffress; Chapter 5: Teaching Through a Traumatic Brain Injury Sarah E. Schoper; Section II: Teaching with a Sensory Disability; Chapter 6: "The Instructor is Partially Def": DHH Professing in Higher Education Lisa M. Dembouski; Chapter 7: Teaching with a Disability in the Classroom: A Dialogue about Disability Praxis Between a Deaf Law Professor and a Hearing Education Professor Michael A. Schwartz and Brent C. Elder; Chapter 8: "Is That Really Our Teacher professor person?" Working from the Boundaries: Enabling from Afar Amin Makkawy; Chapter 9: My Tech Writing Teacher Has Low Vision: Teachable Moments for Accessibility and Diversity in the Technical Communication Classroom Gia Alexander; Section III: Teaching with a Hidden Disability; Chapter 10: To Share or Not to Share? Pedagogical Dilemmas of a Chronically-Ill Lecturer in Teaching with Invisible Disability Adi Finkelstein; Chapter 11: Negotiations of In/Visible Disability in the Rhetoric Classroom Rebecca Miner; Chapter 12: Method to Our Madness: Teaching and Learning Across Mental Disability Aubry D. Threlkeld and Sarah Louis Pieplow; Chapter 13: Teaching with Dis/ability and Madness Mark A. Castrodale; Chapter 14: The Work Around: How Teaching with Andragogical Practices Can Normalize Learning Disabilities in Education Kimberly M. Cuny; Chapter 15: Teaching with Augmentative and Alternative Communication Alyssa Hillary and Sam Harvey; Chapter 16: Being Exhibit A: Teaching AIDS and Music in the University Classroom Paul Attinello; Section IV: Teaching with Disability: Engaging Students and Colleagues; Chapter 17: Disclosing Disability around the Coffee Stand: Strategies for Boosting Collegiality in Academe Pauline T. Newton, Michael S. Jeffress, and Amanda K. Thomas; Chapter 18: The Impact of having an instructor with a disability on student attitudes toward people with disabilities William J. Brown and Michael S. Jeffress; Index