Inverse Inclusion: An Experiential Model for Preservice Teacher Education

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Inverse inclusion is an experience where preservice teachers rotate among multiple roles in a community-based service learning course, learning as a student alongside people with disabilities, as an art teacher, as a teacher’s assistant, and as an observer.

² “Ableism or disability oppression is a term used to describe the all-encompassing system of discrimination and exclusion of people living with disabilities” (Castañeda, Hopkins, & Peters, 2013, p. 461).

³ I intentionally change the term from service learning to service-learning here. The use of a hyphen to join the terms service and learning (service-learning) refers to programs with reciprocity as opposed to hierarchical relationships (service learning). For more, see Taylor and Ballengee-Morris (2004).

⁴ As regular students in the class, preservice teachers are interspersed among students with disabilities, interacting through conversations about art and artmaking, and socializing to promote positive egalitarian relationships, disrupting the conventional teacher–student hierarchy that may create a barrier to mutual understanding.