Teaching About Disability Discourse in the College Classroom

Abstract

This chapter investigates methods for teaching effectively about linguistics research in an undergraduate classroom and for further disseminating my work on disability discourse. The motivational relevance (Candlin and Sarangi, Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 1–8, 2004) for participants with physical disabilities to take part in my research is their desire to raise awareness of their experiences among people without disabilities (Cochrane, Telling disability: Identity construction in personal and vicarious narratives. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2014). To evaluate how my teaching achieves this goal, I administered a questionnaire to (majority non-disabled) students before and after teaching the lesson plan. Key questions included how students defined the term “disability” and what new information they learned. The words most commonly used to define disability shifted from “ability/able”, “perform”, and “normal/normally” before the lesson to “people with disabilities”, “community”, and “individual” afterward. Almost half of the responses mentioned a specific aspect of disability discourse. The overall findings point toward bringing in more narratives from the disability community to connect to students’ own experiences through affective learning (Shephard, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 9(1), 87–98, 2008). Evaluating a single lesson plan to understand what students thought beforehand and took away afterward has been illuminating in ways that general course evaluations are not. My findings suggest ways in which we can better share our linguistics research with undergraduates in the classroom.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Blog Entry Analyzed by Students During the Lesson Plan

Blog data excerpted from Cochrane (2011)

Picture this.

The bus pulls up. The driver looks at your power chair and says “Oh, I never operated the lift before” and then proceeds to prove that point by having to move the bus several times so the lift will go down properly. The driver then radios in that the bus will be late because there is a passenger in a wheelchair.

[…]

You get on the lift. The driver raises it and tells you to hold on to the sides. You can’t hold on, because you have quadriplegia and your arms are paralyzed, but you know she doesn’t know what that is, so you just move your upper body a bit which, luckily, satisfies her.

[…]

You do not think “Oh I wish I wasn’t paralyzed.” You think “I wish someone had trained this driver properly. What good is the equipment if there’s no training?”

[…]

The bus takes off after an approximate delay of twelve to fifteen minutes, more than triple the time it took on the first ride. As one passenger disembarks, he says to you “Hope you’re never taking the same bus I take ever again.”

You know you will. Because you have to get around, just like him.

Appendix 2: Questionnaires

Questionnaire about a Class on Disability Discourse

Dr. Leslie Cochrane

The College of William and Mary

The aim of this survey is to evaluate the impact of a class lecture and discussion in one of Dr. Cochrane’s courses for college students’ understandings of physical disability.

Your participation in answering the following questions is entirely voluntary. You may withdraw at any time without penalty. Your name or other individually identifying information will not be associated with your answers to this survey. There are no foreseeable risks of this study, and there are no benefits aside from helping with the development of the class. None of your grades in any class will be affected by participating, not participating, or withdrawing your participation.

If you have questions about this survey, please contact Dr. Cochrane at lecochrane@wm.edu. If you have concerns about your rights as a participant in the study or want to report dissatisfactions with any aspect of it, please contact Dr. Jennifer Stevens, Chair of the College of William and Mary’s Protection of Human Subjects Committee, at jastev@wm.edu.

• 1. Do you voluntarily agree to take this survey?

  • Yes

  • No

• 2. Are you 18 years of age or older?

  • Yes

  • No

• (An answer of ‘No’ to either question 1 or 2 terminates the survey.)

• 3. Do you consider yourself to be a person with a physical disability?

  • Yes

  • No

  • No, because I would use another term for myself (please provide the term) ____________

  • Prefer not to say

• (If the answer to 3 is ‘Yes’ or ‘No, because I would use another term’, questions 4–6 are used:)

• 4. From what point in your life have you had a physical disability?

  • Since birth or early childhood (about 0–5 year)

  • Since childhood or adolescence (about 6–17 years)

  • Since early adulthood (about 18–24 years of age)

  • Later in life (after 25 years of age)

  • Prefer not to say

• 5. Is your physical disability related to mobility?

  • Yes

  • No

  • Prefer not to say

• 6. Is your physical disability visible: can other people perceive it from the way you appear or move or from an assistive device you use?

  • Yes

  • No

  • Prefer not to say

• (For all answers to 3, the following questions are used:)

• 7. Are you close to anyone (else) with a physical disability? (check all that apply)

  • Family member(s)

  • Friend(s)

  • Person/people I have lived with

  • Person/people I have acted as an assistant to

  • Other person/people I know well

  • Not anyone I am close to or know well

  • Not anyone I can recall

• 8. Have you ever studied physical disability from an academic perspective? (check all that apply)

  • Yes, within a course in which the major topic was disability

  • Yes, within a course on another major topic

  • Yes, in a less formal setting (for example, reading a book on disability)

  • No

• 9. Have you participated in the class lecture and discussion on disability discourse in Dr. Cochrane’s course?

  • Not yet

  • Yes

• (If the answer to 9 is ‘Not yet’, questions 10–11 are used with free response spaces:)

• 10. How would you define disability?

• 11. What (if anything) would you be interested in studying about disability and language?

• (If the answer to 9 is ‘Yes’, questions 12–15 are used, 12–13 with free response spaces:)

• 12. What (if any) new, surprising, or shareable information did you learn in the lecture and discussion?

• 13. What else (if anything) would you be interested in studying about disability and language?

• 14. How long ago did you participate in Dr. Cochrane’s course?

  • This current semester (or this summer)

  • Last semester

  • About a year ago (this semester last year)

  • More than a year ago

• 15. Did you complete a questionnaire before the class lecture and discussion?

  • Yes

  • No