Preparing teachers for diverse K-12 populations generally focuses on educating white women at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) to teach students of color. This approach often focuses exclusively on race/ethnicity and essentializes teachers of color at PWIs as diversity experts. Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) graduate many teachers of color; yet, the continued focus on PWIs leaves unknown how these teachers experience diversity education. This paper explores how students at an MSI engage with the concept of dis/ability as a form of diversity. Informed by how dis/ability studies, critical race theory, and DisCrit intersect with curriculum studies, Schwitzmann examined her students’ written discussion board responses in a diversity course that she teaches at an MSI. She used multiple analytic tools to illuminate in their work the explicit mentioning of dis/ability, as well as affective encounters with equity and social justice outside the realm of discourse. She demonstrates how her students have varied understandings of difference even in a space that explicitly prioritizes social justice, equity, and diversity. Using DisCrit problematizes the assumption that experiences of being marginalized along one line of difference translate into an automatic understanding of diversity along another and highlights the affordances of centering dis/ability studies in diversity education.
In every case, copyright of work appearing in JCT is retained by the author. In accordance with its mandate to promote discussion on matters of curriculum, the Foundation for Curriculum Theory permits limited reproduction of parts of JCT. Individual articles may be reprinted for educational purposes, provided that no fees (other than copying costs) are charged.
For information regarding more extensive copying or reproduction for other purposes, contact:
editors@jctonline.org
