A critical ethnographical exploration of disability under apartheid conditions: The promising potential of palestinian higher education institutions (original) (raw)
Related papers
Disability and Higher Education in Palestine
2019
Disability in Palestine and the experiences and practices of professors and administrators on accommodating disabled students in Palestinian higher education institutions are captured through critical ethnography mode. Disability in Palestine is discussed within the context of what I, as the researcher, call “segregating democracy.” The term segregating democracy refers to the political bonds between Israel and the United States of America that often lead to exclusion of the indigenous Palestinian community from the rest of the world. Segregating democracy and its consequences on disability in Palestine are the context in which the experiences of the Palestinian faculty and administrators are analyzed. Using critical disability studies, while also drawing from elements of teacher development theories, this paper identifies transformational ways of thinking about disability as well as the unique role of educators in promoting/adopting inclusive pedagogical practices towards accommod...
Defying Exclusionary Democracy through Resilience in Palestinian Higher Education
2019
Through a mode of critical ethnography, this article analyzes disability in Palestine and the experiences and practices of professors and administrators on accommodating disabled students in Palestinian institutions of higher education. I discuss disability in Palestine within the context of what I as the researcher call "segregated/exclusionary democracy." The term "segregated/exclusionary democracy" refers to the political bonds between Israel and the United States of America that often lead to exclusion of the indigenous Palestinian community from the rights and privileges of civil government and from participation as members of a nation in the affairs of the world. Segregated/exclusionary democracy and its consequences on disability in Palestine are the context in which the experiences of the Palestinian faculty and administrators are analyzed. Using critical disability studies while also drawing from elements of teacher development theories, this paper identifies transformational ways of thinking about disability in which Palestinian educators defy exclusionary democracy through promoting/adopting inclusive pedagogical practices toward accommodating disabled students in higher education.
Disability Studies Quarterly, 2023
Academic neoliberal ableism has considerable negative implications for all disabled academics, but specifically for the marginalization, liminality, and weakness of disabled graduate students. This is particularly true for the understudied and underrepresented disabled graduate students who are not native English speakers and who live in regions that are geographically and culturally distant from the English-speaking academic hegemony. This article addresses this gap by presenting a collaborative autoethnography of two disabled Israeli doctoral students. The analysis raised two themes. The first includes the complex aspects of learning to perform new academic roles – teachers, conference presenters and researchers – as disabled academics. The second includes our marginality in two contexts, namely our studied disciplines, which fail to see disability as a critical object, and the developing Israeli community of disability studies in which disabled scholars are underrepresented. On the basis of these themes, we identify four combined environments that mirror the intersection between global neoliberal ableism and the specific ableist culture found in Israel, which exacerbate our weakness, marginality, and liminality: The Israeli disability studies community, our discipline, the Israeli academy, and the English-speaking academy.
Disability, the Politics of Maiming, and Higher Education in Palestine
2019
Different pieces of a puzzle are put together to unpack the implications of biopolitical forms in relation to disability in Palestine. Tracing the political connections between Israel and the United States of America (the U.S.), both countries give themselves the right to maim the Palestinians in different forms. Israel maims the indigenous Palestinians in more direct ways, while the U.S. is the guard and supporter of Israel in the process of maiming the Palestinians. Yet, successful, disabled Palestinians have emerged from under the rubble in different fields and in academia and higher education in particular. In this paper, Critical Disability Studies (CDS) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) are used as theoretical frameworks to examine disability in Palestinian higher education in light of political implications. The paper also reveals a dearth of research on disability in Palestinian higher education.
Introduction: Disability Studies in Education-Critical Conversations
Canadian Journal of Disability Studies , 2020
This special issue of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies brings together 19 articles by scholars and activists across broad academic disciplines and activist communitiesfrom disability studies to inclusive education, early childhood education, decolonial studies, feminist anti-violence organizing, community health and more-as well as geopolitical locations.
The Cambridge Educational Research e-Journal (CERJ), 2023
As a commitment to promoting social justice and building inclusive society, this study aimed to review Palestinian policies and practices that support the right of students different disabilities to access inclusive higher education (IHE). To achieve this aim, four data collection tools were used: email correspondence, two focus group discussions involving 38 participant students with visual, physical and hearing disability, six individual interviews with senior directors of disability care offices in PHEIs, and content analysis of 11 policy documents. The results showed absence of factual information about Palestinian students with disabilities, lack of support to adopting in IHE in almost all existing policies and strategic goals, a mixture of practices facilitating and hindering implementation of core elements of IHE, and experience-based policies and practices proposed by the participants to make higher education more accessible and inclusive. Before presenting the conclusions, the study offered recommendations for the inclusiveness of higher education.
Disabled Students at the Palestinian Universities: Birzeit University as a Model
Education in the Knowledge Society (EKS)
Universities vary in the logistic support they provide for the disabled students. At the same time, universities can be a model for the bigger society in the way they undertake and involve this category. In this study, we tried to explore how do students of disabilities perceive their university life at Birzeit University. This will definitely reflect their relationship to their wider society. We also tried to identify the various challenges face the disabled students during their university life. Participants own narratives were used to collect data in focused groups. Data from interviews was transcribed and analyzed following the qualitative approach of content analysis. Results indicated that the disabled students at Birzeit University are trying to live as independent students. They believe that their daily experiences are very similar to other students’ experiences at the university. This perception helps them to construct a positive sense of self, which, in turn, encourage t...
Radical Teacher, 2015
This paper addresses my political and pedagogical resistance to the institutional discrimination of Palestinian Arab students in Israeli academia. Describing my instinctive negative reactions (frustration, helplessness, anger) towards what seems at first sight as their reluctance to study, I go on to criticize my own and other lecturers' tendency to blame the victim by analyzing the structural, cultural, political and social obstacles encountered by Arab students in Israeli institutions of higher education. The paper mainly focuses on the story of my resistance to this prevailing social and political structure. Adopting feminist critical pedagogy in my course "Representing Disability in Literature and the Cinema", I have created a space for my Arab students to overcome at least temporarily their repression by the Israeli academic system. The process of empowerment and the subsequent educational transformative and liberating exchange has enabled all participants to gra...
Radical inclusive education Disability, teaching and struggles for liberation Anat Greenstein
2015
Many people who work in education start out with enthusiastic ideals about education as a positive force that can spur change in the life of the learner and in society at large, yet find themselves frustrated with a bureaucratic system that often alienates and excludes many of its students. This is particularly true for students identified as having “special educational needs” or disability, a label often used to justify the ways in which students are failed by a system that focuses on narrow definitions of knowledge, seeks to normalise and control behaviour, and values economic productivity over other forms of human activity. This book offers a substantive critique of education, which is understood as a political and social process that can work to reify the social order or to challenge it. Informed by the social model of disability, the book argues that educational theories and practices that are geared towards social justice and inclusion need to recognise and value the diversity of human embodiments, needs and capacities, and to foster pedagogical practices that support relations of interdependency. Drawing on examples from interviews with activists in the disabled people’s movement and from ethnographic work in a special needs unit, questions around knowledge, relationships and power are examined in an attempt to re-imagine educational practices, both in and out of schools, which are creative, democratic, and sensitive to the relational and material needs of different members of the community. As such, the book will be of interest to practitioners and students in the field of education, particularly for those interested in SEN and disability, sociology of education, critical pedagogy, informal education and social movement learning.