Presuming Competence

At least since the early 1990s, educators in inclusive schooling as well as scholars in Disability Studies have critiqued prevailing notions of intellectual ability and have suggested the importance of interpretive communities for constructing student competence (Biklen, 1990; Goode, 1992, 1994; Kliewer, 1998; Kluth, 2003; Linneman, 2001). This work follows in the tradition of education-as-dialogue, which some have argued is a sine qua non for conceptualizing education with individuals who have been traditionally marginalized (see for example, Ashton-Warner, 1963, Freire, 1970). The core of this article is a conversation between a university educator and a high school student with autism who types to communicate. Out of this essay, the authors find a series of principles for inclusive schooling, the most central of which is the idea of presuming competence of students.

Notes

1. All of the text written by the second author of this article was produced after he learned to speak as he typed (he can say the words before and as he types them). In the year prior to our writing this article, the student developed the ability to type without any physical support. For all of his writing, the second author had a facilitator sit next to him as he typed. Parts of the discussion were first drafted by the second author for speeches and for an essay that appears in the book, Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone (Biklen, 2005), adapted here with permission.

Controversy about the method of facilitated communication centers on the question of authorship. It has been shown that a facilitator's physical touch of the typist's hand or arm may influence the person's pointing. A number of studies have demonstrated this fact and/or have failed to validate authorship (Bebko, Perry, & Bryson, 1996; Bomba, O'Donnell, Markowitz, & Holmes, 1996; Cabay, 1994; Crews et al., 1995; Eberlin, McConnachie, Ibel, & Volpe, 1993; Klewe, 1993; Montee, Miltenberger, & Wittrock, 1995; Moore, Donovan, Hudson, Dykstra, & Lawrence, 1993; Regal, Rooney, & Wandas, 1994; Shane & Kearns, 1994; Smith & Belcher, 1993; Szempruch & Jacobson, 1993; and Wheeler, Jacobson, Paglieri, & Schwartz, 1993). These studies use one basic type of assessment, namely message passing; that is, the person being assessed was required to convey information that could not be known to the facilitator. Other studies, using a wider range of test situations as well as linguistic analysis and documentation of physical, independent-of-facilitator typing have successfully demonstrated authorship (Broderick & Kasa-Hendrickson, 2001; Calculator & Singer, 1992; Cardinal, Hanson, & Wakeham, 1996; Emerson, Grayson, & Griffiths, 2001; Janzen-Wilde, Duchan, & Higginbotham, 1995; Niemi & Kärnä-Lin, 2002; Rubin, Biklen, Kasa-Hendrickson, Kluth, Cardinal, & Broderick, 2001; Sheehan & Matuozzi, 1996; Tuzzi, Cemin, & Castagna, (2004); Weiss, Wagner, & Bauman, 1996; and Zanobini & Scopesi, 2001). The studies by Cardinal and his colleagues (1996), Sheehan and Matuozzi (1996), and Weiss, Wagner, and Bauman (1996) all involved message passing experiments, but unlike many of the assessments in which individuals failed to demonstrate authorship, these involved extensive testing sessions, with the possible effect of desensitizing the subjects to test anxiety.

2. It is perhaps fitting that the psychiatrist is played by the film's director, Barry Levinson, for the film itself, his film, conveys the message that a person who is different belongs in an institution and has no place in the everyday world inhabited by the undiagnosed.

3. Crossing midline refers to a person's ability to move an arm from one side of the body to the other, a skill one needs for playing most games and for many other tasks.