Bridging continents, cultures, and crip theories: teaching Comparative and International Disability Studies in education and sociology^*

* The idea for this paper emerged out of a research project with the title ‘Nothing about us without us becoming us – Processes of institutional change and identity formation in disabled people’s self-organization’, which was conducted at the Sociology Department of Emory University in Atlanta, where Florian Kiuppis stayed for ten months as Visiting Research Scholar, supported by a personal overseas research scholarship granted from The Research Council of Norway (project number 225440).

ABSTRACT

This article deals with the question how to teach Disability Studies and Inclusive Education to international student populations in higher education (HE). It provides a glimpse into an example of teaching practice, namely a workshop on experiences and expectations of disabled international students in HE, organized by the second author. By referring to the notion of bridging, it reflects how various understandings of what disability is, can be linked up and made fruitful in the classroom. The proposal of this article is twofold: for the theorization of disability, that a variant of ‘Comparative and International Disability Studies’ shall come into being; and for the practice of inclusion in HE, that the time is ripe for a concrete and constructive discussion about the access, participation and educational achievement of international students with disabilities in universities abroad, as well as about appropriate forms of assistance for their mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Teaching
• Comparative and International Disability Studies (CIDS)
• social-relational model
• Scandinavia
• Nordic countries
• Norway

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Note on contributors

Florian Kiuppis holds a Ph.D from Humboldt University, Berlin (GER) and is an Associate Professor of Inclusive Education, and Vice Director of The Research Centre for Child and Youth Competence Development, at Lillehammer University College (NOR).

Armineh Soorenian holds a Ph.D from the University of Leeds (UK) and is an independent researcher based in Leeds, publishing, campaigning, lecturing and delivering workshops specifically on inclusive education issues.

Notes

* The idea for this paper emerged out of a research project with the title ‘Nothing about us without us becoming us – Processes of institutional change and identity formation in disabled people’s self-organization’, which was conducted at the Sociology Department of Emory University in Atlanta, where Florian Kiuppis stayed for ten months as Visiting Research Scholar, supported by a personal overseas research scholarship granted from The Research Council of Norway (project number 225440).

1. Only those students who completed the course [course title 1] can take part in the course [course title 2]. For the latter students construct a syllabus (based on ca. 1000 pages of literature) individually on their own, in cooperation with the course leader. As part of the exams, the students are expected to write an essay on the basis of their syllabus. This way we meet the requirement of the method of comparison, to keep in mind the significance of personal experience in shaping intellectual interests (Bendix 1998, 311).

2. We particularly focus here on the Disability Studies communities in the UK, in the US and in Northern Europe, as both our teaching and our research are located within these contexts. In the section on ‘Bridging’, we bring these three research and activist traditions in relation. 

3. These points are essential part of the research project with the title ‘Rethinking Disability: the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective’ Florian Kiuppis joins as Core Group Member, which is conducted at the Institute for History of Leiden University (The Netherlands), financed by an ERC Consolidator Grant of the project leader Monika Baár (October 2015-September 2020).

4. This aspect the students become aware of, for example, when visiting a DPO in Norway that makes explicit reference to the IL-movement, organizing Personal Assistance services. This we use as background to discuss various representations of IL in different contexts. Another way of actually involving the students into the situation of members of the IL-movement (and thereby meeting essential requirements of Disability Studies, such as the participatory and emancipatory paradigm) is to bring them into direct contact with activists such as Lois Curtis who exchanged paintings of the students with letters from the students.

5. The students were aware of the housing situation of Adolf Ratzka in the 1960's at the University of California Los Angeles, had prior to the visit of [Armineh Soorenian] watched a short documentary film (Herzog 1970) and discussed this in line with Bendix’ eight basic principles of CIDS.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Research Council of Norway under Personal Grant (in context of The Leiv Eiriksson mobility programme) with Project Number 225440.