Interrogating inclusion with youths who use augmentative and alternative communication

Abstract

Even as the goal of social inclusion underpins health and social services for disabled youths, those with communication impairments continue to lead narrowly circumscribed lives. In this Canadian study, we combined visual methods and interviews with 13 Canadian youths who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to understand how they make 'practical sense' of discourses of inclusion. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of practice, we suggest: (i) participants' narratives reveal habitusa socially constituted set of dispositionsthat predispose them to accommodate the devalued social positions and constricted conditions of existence imposed on them; (ii) some forms of 'inclusion' perpetuate symbolic violence, as youths who use AAC internalise, as seemingly 'natural', dominant social norms and values that privilege 'normal' bodies; and (iii) although their practices primarily reproduced the status quo, youths in the study also worked at the margins to create locally produced forms of inclusion that attempted to transform the 'rules of the game'. We argue these results suggest a need for systemic shifts past reified notions of inclusion towards fostering social spaces where alternative ways of being in the world are positively valued.

Problematizing ‘productive citizenship’ within rehabilitation services: insights from three studies

“…The three authors of this article first shared our work during a meeting held in Toronto, Canada in 2012 that brought together an international group of rehabilitation academics and trainees around the topic of 're-thinking rehabilitation' [4]. Five years later, having each completed our doctoral work, the three of us came together again to discuss the compelling intersections and common threads we observed across the results of our seemingly distinct studies [5][6][7]. Although the three studies all addressed disability and rehabilitation in some manner, each had a different focus, research question and context (see vignettes later in the article), and none explicitly sought to analyse 'productive citizenship'.…”

“…Vignette 1: Examining effects of individual embodiment of 'productive citizenship' norms within and beyond formal education Our first vignette [6] draws on research that investigated inclusion with young people in Ontario, Canada who used augmentative and alternative communicationthat is, youth who had little or no speech and communicate in other ways. The methodology combined visual methods with dialogical interviews [32] to generate rich, multi-perspectival data.…”

Integrating Visual Methods With Dialogical Interviews in Research With Youth Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication

“…These gaps and issues informed the development of a critical qualitative study which aimed to (1) contribute detailed descriptions of the daily activities, social networks, personal geographies, and material environments of youth who use AAC and their perceptions of inclusion and (2) interpret the ways youth who use AAC accommodated, resisted, or reformulated dominant social inclusion discourses to position themselves in and across various social fields (Teachman, 2016). We used a multicenter design that combined face-to-face interviews with participant-generated photographs, a graphic elicitation technique termed Belonging Circles (McKeever et al, 2015), and observations (in the form of extensive field notes).…”

“…In designing research that critically explored the notion of "inclusion" with youth who use AAC (Teachman, 2016), we aimed to advance emergent methodologies by explicitly surfacing and addressing the above noted concerns about the authenticity of accounts generated with persons who communicate primarily in ways other than speech. To address this goal, we looked to Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogism (1981Bakhtin's dialogism ( , 1994 to help theorize communication difference and to argue that talk generated using mediated communication modes is no less authentic than any other interview data.…”

A socio‐emotional analysis of technology use by people with intellectual disabilities

“…Instead of aiming to simply ‘include’ people who have been marginalised into mainstream society and technology use, some researchers suggest instead a focus on questioning and challenging the social hierarchies that create this marginalisation (Labonte 2004; Marien and Prodnik 2014). Relatedly, Teachman (2016) advises that idealising and viewing inclusion as a universal good can be harmful because the meaning of inclusion varies depending on an individual's social position. Focusing solely on ‘including’ may thus lead to limited consideration of social, political and economic conditions that restrict an individual's choices and actions (Marien and Prodnik 2014), which may cause a detrimental division between the dominant majority and individuals viewed as ‘others’.…”