Performative pedagogies of care and the emerging geographies of school exclusion for students with disability

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I examine how performative practices of care that are primarily focused on academic achievement and learning outcomes have contributed to the creation of geographies of exclusion within mainstream schools for students with disability. Through a study of a 12-year-old student diagnosed with autism in a secondary school in Melbourne, Australia, I maintain that performative care makes certain groups of students ‘intelligible’ by responding to their needs while rendering others as unrecognisable care subjects in schools. The cognitive ableist bias underpinning performative care provides students with academic abilities with the necessary permissions to develop a sense of belonging to the mainstream school while creating boundaries of exclusion against those who do not embody the qualities of performative student subjects. I maintain that an approach to care as a public good and a relational ethics can help create more inclusive social geographies within mainstream schools for students with disability.

KEYWORDS:

• Belonging
• disability
• ethic of care
• neoliberal
• performativity
• performative care
• social geography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ICSEA is an indicator that allows comparisons of NAPLAN results among students. It represents the relative magnitude of factors within students’ background, such as parents’ occupation or education level, and school factors, such as geographical location, as they relate to students’ educational outcomes.

2 Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) is calculated based on students’ academic achievement in Year 12. It is one criterion used for entry into undergraduate university programs in Australia.

3 The Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) is a certificate that students in the state of Victoria receive upon the successful completion of their secondary education. It provides pathways to students enter further education, training or employment.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Babak Dadvand

Dr. Babak Dadvand is a research fellow at the Youth Research Center, and a lecturer at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, the University of Melbourne. Dr Dadvand’s research is in areas of diversity, inclusion and social justice education, examining the processes that marginalize and exclude students on the basis of factors such as socio-economic status, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and disability.