Disability, the arts and the curriculum: Is there common

Abstract

This paper reports on the findings of a study that sought to examine firstly, the themes expressed in the art of disabled people in Greece and Cyprus and in interviews with these artists, and secondly, the ways that such art can serve the school curriculum. To this end, an electronic archive of the life stories and art of interest was analysed. The findings suggest that both the art and the interviews cover issues that are directly related to disability, and issues of general interest. A detailed analysis of two cases seeks to provide an in-depth understanding of the relevance of disabled artists and their work within the curriculum. The discussion focuses on issues emerging from the analysis, such as the potential of this art to enrich the school curriculum and promote inclusive education, and identifies the study’s contribution to the international literature about disability, the arts and the curriculum.

Introduction

This paper reports on a study that draws on an ongoing research project entitled “Tesserae of Knowledge”. The aim of the project is to collect, archive, and make public the life stories and artwork produced by or in collaboration with disabled people and people with chronic illnesses living in Cyprus and Greece. The life stories are recorded in the form of oral history interviews, semi-structured interviews, and documentaries, and the artwork includes poems, texts, statues, mosaics, songs, paintings and videos. Given that this kind of material was not available in the countries of interest, information from personal contacts, disability organizations and internet searches was used in order to identify disabled people whose work could contribute to the project. To date, a total of twenty-seven people have participated in the project, 10 women and 17 men. All the material collected was digitised and uploaded to the project website with the artists’ consent. A number of studies have been conducted so far in order to explore how this material could be helpful for teachers’ professional development, particularly in understanding inclusive education and developing curricula for inclusion at the micro-level (Symeonidou and Damianidou 2013; Chrysostomou and Symeonidou 2017). The aim of the study reported herein was to map the thematic areas covered by the material of interest, and to explore how these can inform the school curriculum and thus foster inclusive education.

Arguably, inclusive education is about providing high quality education for all students in the mainstream school, and it involves values of participation and collaboration (Booth 2009), dismantling barriers and providing democratic schooling (Booth and Ainscow 2002; Slee 2010), educating teachers for inclusion (Ware 2008, 2011; Florian 2009; Forlin 2010, 2011; Cosier and Ashby 2016), developing flexible curricula that appreciate diversity and target all students (Erevelles 2005; Norwich and Lewis 2007; Connor and Gabel 2013), differentiating teaching in mixed ability classes (Tomlinson 2014), and teaching about diversity without reproducing dominant stereotypes (Ware 2008, 2011; Connor and Gabel 2013). Arguments for disabled children’s inclusion followed disabled activists’ struggle for inclusion in society; this became a powerful movement that led to the development of disability studies (Watson, Roulstone, and Thomas 2012). In the last decade, a number of researchers in the field of inclusive education have drawn on the literature of disability studies to explore how it could inform the development of inclusive education (Connor et al. 2008; Danforth and Gabel 2008).

Arguably, disability studies could offer new insights to contested issues in the field, such as the nature of instruction, the form of the curriculum, and the components of teacher education for inclusion. For example, the last decade has seen a growing interest in how art created by disabled artists authentically conveys their life experiences, and offers new insights into disability (Ware 2011). In particular, art by disabled artists, either visual, written or performed (such as painting, sculpture, music, literature, poetry, dance, drama, documentary, photography), is infused with autobiographical elements that make it unique and valuable in challenging dominant stereotypes about disability. What is known today as ‘disability arts’ is associated with art focusing on the experience of living with an impairment, and has a clear political element (Barnes and Mercer 2001; Sutherland 1997). It is believed that disability arts have the power to promote disability culture and claim disability aesthetics (Siebers 2010), and can help disabled and non-disabled people appreciate their own and each other’s identities.

Although disability arts has primarily been seen as a means of self-expression that criticised disablism and celebrated the lived experience of disability, disability identity and the disabled body, its value for the school curriculum is now being addressed. In an era where inclusive education is seen as a means of achieving the right of all children to quality education alongside their peers, the curriculum is expected to be fundamentally inclusive. It has been argued that all children, regardless of their impairment, are entitled to access to ‘a common curriculum for all, or an inclusive curriculum’ (Norwich and Lewis 2007, 135), given that such curriculum allows emphasis on particular areas when necessary such as the use of augmentative and alternative communication. At the same time, inclusive curricula are a means through which the concept of disability can be understood as a social and human rights issue, rather than a personal tragedy or a medical issue (Ware 2011; Symeonidou and Mavrou 2014). The art curriculum can usefully incorporate disabled people’s art, thus building understanding of disability as a complex issue, associated with a unique lived experience that differs from person-to-person (Eisenhauer 2007). In this context, teachers are now expected to teach about disability, and resolve questions such as ‘which representations accurately portray disabled people’s lives, which reinforce stereotypes, and which are available at each grade level?’ (Connor and Gabel 2013, 108).

In my personal journey towards understanding the power of disability arts in both initial teacher education and teachers’ continuing professional development, I have struggled with the issue of infusing disability arts in the curriculum in subjects other than art education, such as language and life skills. In this journey, the distinctions between a ‘disability artist’ and an ‘artist with a disability’ (Sutherland 1997), and between ‘disability arts’ and ‘disabled people doing art’ (Barnes and Mercer 2001) were critical. Disabled people doing art is any kind of art created by disabled people that is not overtly political. Although it may be of aesthetic value, it entails the danger of being introduced into the curriculum in order to justify the admiration of disabled people who can create artwork despite their impairment (Eisenhauer 2007). Disability arts share the experience of disability and criticise social exclusion and discrimination, and thus become ‘educative, transformative, expressive and participatory’ (Barnes and Mercer 2001, 529). In my view, one of the challenges of developing inclusive curricula is to introduce disability arts in order to challenge exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination, while at the same time introducing pieces of art produced by disabled people that are worth introducing to students because they could serve a range of other curricular goals. This challenge guided the study reported here, which sought to answer the following research questions: What are the themes expressed in the art of disabled people in Greece and Cyprus and in interviews with these artists? In what ways can such art serve the school curriculum?

Context of the study

Cyprus and Greece are neighbouring countries, and have common characteristics, such as use of the Greek language, common cultural traditions and shared values in relation to key figures in the arts. This explains why there are common textbooks in the subjects of language and literature, through which students in the two countries are acquainted with key authors and poets of Greek origin. Despite this common ground, the two countries differ in a number of ways, in their size (Greece has a population of about eleven million, whereas the population in Cyprus is less than one million), policy-making and law, services, among other characteristics.

In both Cyprus and in Greece, disabled people have been active in claiming their rights, and have formed their own organisations to lobby the state (Symeonidou 2009, 2014; Karagianni 2014). Despite improvements in policy and practice in both countries, disabled people are still discriminated against and their rights are not fully recognised. In both contexts, disabled artists’ work reflects their concerns about the societies they live in. Given a weak sense of identification with disability culture, however, disabled artists’ work cannot be characterised as highly political.

The quest for inclusive education and the matter of introducing disability issues into the curriculum are comparatively new in both contexts. There is therefore an urgency to provide teachers with education and resources that enable them to understand and teach about disability. The current research is based on the principle that both teachers and students can best understand disabled people’s experiences and opinions through their paintings, sculptures, poems, music and narratives, rather than through non-disabled people’s depictions of disability that usually simply reproduce dominant stereotypes of disability. In this context, opening up the curriculum to such work is a central task.

Methodology

As mentioned above, the study reported here draws on the research project “Tesserae of Knowledge”. A total of 417 documents, such as published and unpublished interview transcripts, poems, videos, photos of artwork, music, lyrics and other materials, were included in the analysis. The inclusion criteria were as follows: (a) any kind of documents relevant to disability produced by or in co-operation with disabled people and people with chronic illnesses, (b) any kind of documents produced by or in cooperation with disabled people and people with chronic illnesses referring to any topics of relevance for curriculum subjects at all levels of education (pre-primary, primary, secondary and higher education), such as personal and civic, nature, history and local culture. Documents produced without the contribution of disabled people or people without chronic illness and documents expressing opinion about political parties or political issues were not included in the analysis.

The process of developing the coding frame for the thematic areas raised in the documents followed a grounded theory approach, and entailed a series of important decisions. Two researchers (the author and a research assistant) coded the documents independently, and collaborated to resolve coding dilemmas. A preliminary coding frame was developed, and was finalised after the second reading of the documents. A clear definition was formulated for each code, explaining specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. This process led to a number of dilemmas, particularly when codes that seemed appropriate at the beginning of the process appeared too broad as the coding proceeded. The principal researcher and the research assistant talked through the dilemmas as they arose in order to arrive at the final codes and their definitions. Most documents were assigned to more than one thematic category code. The next step was to tag each document according to its type (e.g. biography, poem, photograph, interview, article, painting, sculpture, song etc.), its relevance to a curriculum subject (e.g. language, mathematics, music, art education and so on), and suitability for student age groups (e.g. pre-primary, primary, lower secondary, upper secondary). Most documents were tagged with more than one curriculum subject and student age group. The Greek-Cypriot curriculum (Ministry of Education and Culture 2010) was used in the analysis.

In the next section, an overview of the findings is provided, followed by a detailed presentation of two examples of items analysed in relation to their relevance to the curriculum.

Findings

Themes

The analysis identified eleven broad themes: four themes were relevant to disabled people, two were relevant solely to issues other than disability and four were relevant to people, either disabled or non-disabled. The following table (Table 1) lists the themes and provides a brief explanation of their content.

Table 1. List of themes.

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Despite the richness of their work, the findings suggest that disabled people in Cyprus and Greece are not dedicated to disability arts. As a result, their work is multifaceted, and is concerned with a range of issues that could be of interest to artists in general. Nineteen out of the twenty-seven artists have produced work that is overtly related to their experience of disability and includes a political element. However, in no case can the entire work of an artist be characterised as political, rather their experience of disability is one aspect of their work. Given the range of themes reflected in these disabled artists’ work, it is useful to examine whether and in what ways it can be related to the curriculum.

Curriculum

In this section, I provide two examples that demonstrate how disabled artists’ work can be related to curricular goals of particular subjects and students’ age groups. The first example shows how disability-inspired work can serve a curriculum that seeks to promote disability equality education and challenge ableism. The second example shows how apolitical artwork produced by disabled artists can serve the curriculum. The presentation of the examples follows a ‘five Ws’ approach: Who is the artist? What is the artwork of interest? Why is it of value? Where in the curriculum can it be included? When can it be used? The rationale behind this approach is that the profiles and overall work of the artists can help place their art in context and then lead to an examination of particular works of art and their place and use in the curriculum.

‘But anyway’

Who is the artist?

The Greek-Cypriot poet Dina Pagiasi-Katsouri approaches different aspects of life in her poems. She has written about love, relationships, her country’s political situation, even football and its social dimensions. Kehagioglou (2009) suggests that her poetry combines humanitarianism, Cyprus-centred insights and international dimensions, while her realistic lyrics are often enriched with ‘flashbacks’. Her life trajectory was much influenced by her late husband, Yiannis Katsouris, who was also a significant literary figure. Dina Pagiasi-Katsouri is known not only for her poetry, but also for her work in cultural and youth programming at the national broadcasting agency, and for her cultural contribution as editor of the magazine Anef (translated as ‘Without’) which is described as ‘a magazine for discourse, arts, and thinking’.

Born in 1941 and diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 34, Dina Pagiasi-Katsouri has lived more than half her life as a wheelchair user. She did not experience the ‘fear of the wheelchair’ for the length of time that other people with chronic illnesses often do, because she became a wheelchair user within a few months of diagnosis. In an interview for the project (Kita, Stylianidou, and Fraggoulidou 2013), she describes herself as a ‘fighter of the spirit and life’ (1), and she explains that despite her initial negative reactions about becoming a wheelchair user, she gradually realised that ‘finding yourself in a wheelchair, doesn’t mean that it’s all over. […] In my judgement, I had to fight for myself and for my rights, and give to culture and society, and this is what I did’ (2).

What is the artwork of interest?

Her poem ‘But anyway’ [in Greek, Ma telos panton] is one of the few published poems reflecting her experience of disability.

But anywayShe is a beauty*she said to the woman from Sri Lanka.And she stared at herpuzzled and frantic.But anywayCouldn’t she see her ebony beauty?Her broad smileher shiny handsher legs turned on a latheher agile body?But anywaycouldn’t she seethat she was a wheelchairof the latest technology?

*This lyric was in English. The remaining of the poem was translated into English by the author of this paper.

Why is it of value?

In this poem, the poet is reflecting on a conversation with her personal assistant (in Cyprus a number of personal assistants and housekeepers are from Sri Lanka), beginning with the comment ‘She is a beauty’. The personal assistant feels ‘puzzled and frantic’, but at first the reader does not realise why. As the story evolves, the reader forms the impression that the poet describes an attractive lady, while at the same time wonders why her assistant cannot see her beauty. The poem ends with a subversion: the attractive lady is a high-tech wheelchair. Evidently, the wheelchair is ‘a beauty’ because of its usefulness to the poet: it is the means through which she can move freely; the means through which she overcomes physical barriers to participation. The title of the poem ‘But anyway’, is repeated in the poem twice, and serves to highlight the differing views about the wheelchair: the wheelchair as a latest technology mobility companion, and the wheelchair as a symbol linked to inability, passivity and pity. Apart from its powerful message, the use of language, the organisation and structure of the poet’s thoughts, and the form and flow add to the value of this poem.

Where can it be included in the curriculum? When can it be used?

The analysis of the poem suggests that it addresses two themes. The first is individual characteristics/identity: disability is part of the person’s identity and the wheelchair is the aid that serves his or her mobility. The second is access: the wheelchair is a technological aid that enables its user to access the built environment and thus participate in everyday life. Table 2 maps how these themes are linked to the main components of each subject curriculum and the corresponding student age group.

Table 2. Relevance of Dina Pagiasi-Katsouri’s poem ‘But anyway’ to the curriculum.

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Previous research informs us that the Greek-Cypriot curriculum does not take into consideration disabled children and adults, in terms of content, goals, means and materials, or assessment (Symeonidou and Mavrou 2014; Mavrou and Symeonidou 2014). Thus, apart from the realisation that this particular poem could be employed in the curriculum in a number of different ways, it becomes clear that the goals extracted from the curriculum were not formulated with this poem in mind, or even with disability-related issues in mind. Consequently, using this poem to serve the suggested curriculum goals requires teachers who have a background in disability issues. For example, in the life skills curriculum, the goal related to analysing the self in five dimensions (body, mind, feelings, social, ethical) can be understood as the self that represents the norm (e.g. able-bodied person with good cognitive ability), rather than the self as a complex concept that can be the outcome of a range of individual characteristics, feelings, impairments, etc. Similarly, the goals about accepting diversity and multiculturalism, combating social exclusion and developing friendships with emphasis on ‘special abilities/needs’ (life skills and religious education curricula) capture concepts that are generally understood as values that teachers need to teach students who are considered as the ‘Self’ about their obligation to respect the ‘Others’ (e.g. disabled children, refugee children, poor children), who are marginalised.

‘Motherhood’

Who is the artist?

The late Greek sculptor Petros Roukoutakis (1953–2015) has created sculptures of high aesthetic value, conveying messages about human relationships and activities, the body and experiences associated with it, nature and Greek mythology. In his interview with Stefanis (2008), he stated that his sources of inspiration are mental images and personal experiences. For his sculptures, he has used different materials such as clay, wood, marble and bronze. He has had a number of solo exhibitions, has participated in group exhibitions, and his large-scale sculptures can be found in public buildings and public spaces in Greece. He is known for his involvement in organisations and actions promoting the art of sculpture. He has received awards for his art and his contribution in teaching sculpture.

Petros Roukoutakis began to lose his vision at the age of 28 due to diabetes. At the time, he had completed his art studies in Rome and was working as an art teacher and a painter. His acquired impairment has greatly influenced his life course and his art. In his interview with Stefanis (2008), he discussed how becoming blind turned his life upside down; he got divorced and stopped doing art for two years. He explained that meeting other blind people helped him realise that he could go on with his life. He remembered that before losing his sight completely, he performed an experiment. He covered his eyes and tried to create a small head of a dog, using play-dough. When he managed to see how it looked in the day light, he realised: ‘Yes, I can go on’ (17, author translation). His path from life as a sighted person, to a partially sighted person, and then a blind person has influenced his artwork and his trajectory as an arts educator. In particular, he has moved from painting to sculpture (because as a blind person he found it more meaningful to create art through the sense of touch), and from being an art teacher in schools to teaching sculpture to small groups of blind, and sometimes blind and deaf, children.

There are a few significant self-autobiographical sculptures, reflecting Roukoutakis’ engagement with sculpture as a blind artist. For example, his outdoor sculpture entitled ‘The blind sculptor’ (1998), is a large bronze sculpture found in Apollo Square in Athens, Greece. It illustrates a sitting man working on a shapeless piece of material. The sculptor’s face looks straight ahead, indicating that he sculpts with his hands rather than with his eyes. Another sculpture, inspired by his experience of teaching sculpture to blind and deaf children is entitled ‘Teaching art to a blind and deaf pupil’. It is a small bronze sculpture around 30 cm high, showing two figures (a male and a female) working closely using their hands, almost embracing each other, while trying to give shape to a shapeless material. Roukoutakis’ experience of blindness is also evident in the titles of some of his exhibitions in which allegorical words about light and dark are used (e.g. Bright darks; Figures: The process from darkness to light).

What is the artwork of interest?

Although the autobiographical sculptures described above were analysed for the purposes of the study, I now turn to present the analysis of a sculpture unrelated to living with blindness, entitled ‘Motherhood’. It is a white sculpture, 34 cm long, made of reinforced concrete. It shows a sitting mother holding a baby in her arms. Her hands are large compared to her body, and her position implies that she has perhaps just given birth (a link to the photo of the sculpture is available on the project website and will be provided post-review).

Why is it of value?

Apart from the personal significance of the chosen theme, possibly for the artist himself (as a son, a husband, and a father), and for a number of other people with similar experiences, including mothers themselves, the sculpture is of value for other reasons. It is authentic, and reflects the effort of the artist to illustrate motherhood with reinforced concrete, following sculpting techniques that helped him present his idea. The artist has depicted a human figure at a small scale, which increases the level of complexity of his task. In particular, presenting realistic human figures is considered difficult, and requires fine artistic skills in order to record details in small sculptures. The movement and style of the figures, the length of the mother’s hands and the neatness in the finishing touches contribute to the aesthetic quality of the sculpture.

Where can it be included in the curriculum? When can it be used?

Table 3 records how the main themes assigned to this sculpture are linked to the curriculum.

Table 3. Relevance of Petros Roukoutakis’s sculpture ‘Motherhood’ to the curriculum.

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As expected, the curriculum includes a number of goals associated with motherhood. The links between curriculum goals and motherhood can be either direct or indirect. Examples of direct links can be found in religious education and biology. In particular, in religious education, ‘the birth of a child as a gift for the family, and love between the members of the family’ are goals related to motherhood and raise issues related to it, such as interpersonal relationships and emotions. For example, a photo of Roukoutakis’ sculpture could be used in textbooks or in class to initiate discussion about how the mother feels, how the family feels, how family relationships develop as a result of the birth of a child and the experience of love in the family. In biology, ‘pregnancy, birth and health of the fetus’ involve motherhood and related issues such as individual characteristics – identity (body), and interpersonal relationships. A photo of Roukoutakis’ sculpture could be used in textbooks or in class to initiate discussion about the mother’s body during and after pregnancy, and the moment of birth. Examples of indirect links are found in language, life skills and arts education. For example, in life skills there are a number of goals related to the body (e.g. how the body changes, stereotypes around female and male bodies), interpersonal relationships (e.g. life values, actions of love and people’s choices) and emotions (e.g. empowerment of the self though recognition of emotions and understanding emotions associated with body changes during development, e.g. puberty). All these goals are relevant to the lives of both disabled and non-disabled people.

In relation to art curriculum, it could be argued that a number of sculptures, and not just ‘Motherhood’, could be of interest. However, as the analysis identified, there are particular themes that can be directly and indirectly linked to the sculpture of interest. As Table 3 suggests, the issues of individual characteristics – identity (body, mobility, communication), interpersonal relationships and emotions, can be associated with two components of the art curriculum: sustainable development and the visual expression of concepts. Any piece of visual art can be related to the part of the curriculum covering the visual expression of concepts, but ‘Motherhood’ could be helpful for introducing aspects of sculpture (the language of visual arts), and messages about motherhood, family relationships, emotions etc. (reactions and meanings). ‘Motherhood’ can be useful for its indirect links to the theme of sustainable development/environment to explore motherhood as part of the human environment, to facilitate understanding and narrating the meaning of artwork focusing on motherhood, and for linking to motherhood, as has been illustrated in visual arts, to life and society.

Disability, the arts and the curriculum

This analysis has demonstrated that embedding disability arts and other disabled people’s artwork in the curriculum requires a generic understanding of the artists’ profile and work, and a systematic analysis of each piece of art so that it is linked with subject-specific themes in the curriculum. Taking as a premise that the arts have inclusive potential (Allan 2014), this section discusses the issues emerging from the study and relates them to other literature on the topic.

The analysis of all the profiles and the body of work of disabled artists suggests that all those involved in the study produced art that can be characterised as both political in relation to disability, and apolitical, in the sense that all of them were concerned with issues other than disability. This finding is relevant to the history of the disability movement and disability culture. Research suggests that despite their long history, the disability movements in both Cyprus and Greece adopted a social model and human rights-based approach to disability with related rhetoric after 2000, and their power and impact in policy development has not been consistent (Symeonidou 2009, 2014; Karagianni 2014). In countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, where the disability movement has a long tradition of engagement in politics in parallel with theorising and researching disability (Campbell and Oliver 1996; Longmore 2003), strong engagement with disability culture influenced a number of artists known for their work in disability arts (examples and commentary on such work are provided by Allan 2005, 2014; Eisenhauer 2007; Ware 2011; Kuppers 2014). Thus, disabled artists’ work is influenced by their experience of disability or chronic illness in contexts where disability politics and disability culture have followed different trajectories and had differing impacts on the groups they represent.

Given that the context of art production varies from country to country, this study maintains that disability apolitical works of art produced by disabled artists can be valuable for the curriculum in ways other than contributing directly to disability equality in education. Having said that, I need to address the distinction made in the introduction between disability arts and disabled people doing art (Sutherland 1997; Barnes and Mercer 2001); a distinction made to warn us about the value of disability arts and the potential peril of focusing on disabled artists’ achievements. Indeed, disability arts entail powerful autobiographical elements that keep the focus on disability issues such as discriminatory practices, disability pride, the significance of assistive technology for disabled people, disability as part of a person’s identity, and so on. Examples of ground-breaking work, along these lines, include the Circle Stories series of portraits by Lehrer (2004), the narrative by Sherry (2006) ‘If only I had a brain’, and the narratives by Eli Claire (e.g. ‘Exile and Pride’, Clare 1999). However, a possible consequence of focusing solely on disability arts and the curriculum is that disabled artists are not appreciated for their overall work or for their works of art that could enrich the curriculum in various ways. Opening up the curriculum to encompass any work by disabled people that is considered valuable and appropriate to subject-specific themes means that both disability political and apolitical work are of interest.

In this complex context surrounding disabled artists’ life experiences and art, the significance of analysing such work in relation to the curriculum lies in its potential to promote inclusive education. This analysis can be helpful even if the given curriculum cannot be characterised as inclusive (e.g. it does not consider disabled people’s life experiences and identities, it marginalises issues that are important in disability culture, and it reproduces stereotypes of disabled people). It is crucial to provide tools that can help teachers understand their role in implementing the curriculum as critical professionals. The study presented in this paper demonstrates that it is possible to identify a range of curriculum subjects and key subject themes that can be related to disability issues and to other issues that are reflected in disabled people’s art. Not only does this ‘exercise’ provide evidence to suggest that there are numerous occasions where disabled people’s work can aid the implementation of the curriculum, it also enables teachers to make the connections themselves, and to be more creative when designing their lessons. It also helps us move a step forwards from the occasional ‘add and stir’ approach to the art curriculum, discussed by Connor and Gabel (2013, 109). Given the multifaceted demographic profiles of students in schools, I would argue that similar tools addressing other aspects of human individuality such as culture, language and religion are equally important.

A careful analysis of disabled people’s work can make the implementation of the curriculum more meaningful to teachers, and help them move from traditional approaches to diversity such as talking about the Other as the person we need to love, respect and include, even if s/he differs from the Self, or from a number of other superficial understandings of disability, (described by Zoniou-Sideri et al. 2006; as ‘common sense’ understandings of disability). In this global discussion about how best we can educate teachers, what relates to the discussion about disability, the arts, and the curriculum is the argument that teachers’ commitment to inclusive education is enhanced when they are engaged with disability arts (Ware 2011; Valle and Connor 2012; Allan 2014). Taking this a step further, I would argue that educating teachers with these kind of materials not only helps them understand the concept of disability and commit to inclusive education, it also increases the possibility that teachers are engaged in implementing the curriculum in inclusive ways. Put simply, if teachers understand disability through disabled people’s profiles and art, they feel more confident in employing such materials in their teaching.

Conclusions

In conclusion, incorporating disabled artists’ work into the curriculum can provide an alternative to traditional forms of curricula that fail to represent disabled people. This approach needs to be understood as a process of analysing disabled artists’ profiles and artwork, and developing tools that indicate their relevance to the curriculum. Such tools can serve a series of goals, such as understanding disabled people’s art in relation to their life experiences, understanding them as artists, educating teachers for inclusive education and helping them to ‘intervene’ in the given curriculum as informed professionals. In order to serve these goals, the analysis and tools need to be context-specific and consider history, local culture, local language, the disability movement and disability culture. At the same time, such endeavours must draw on international literature in the field, and contribute to the discussion about the critical issues embedded in this process, such as the argument that introducing disability arts (as opposed to apolitical artwork produced by disabled people) in the curriculum may be more productive and ‘safe’. Infusing this work into the curriculum, and into teaching and teacher education entails policy initiatives that ensure an honest and long-term commitment to inclusive education. Such policies would enable close collaboration between policy-makers, practitioners and academics-teacher educators. Bringing about change at different levels is a complex task, but it should be a priority as it may eventually contribute to bringing teachers and children to comfort with these topics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Simoni Symeonidou is an assistant professor at the Department of Education, University of Cyprus. Her research interests include teacher education for inclusion, currriculum development for inclusion, disability arts, inclusive education policy and practice and disability politics. She is the co-ordinator of the project “Tesserae of Knowledge” (www.ucy.ac.cy/psifides-gnosis).Previous articleView issue table of contentsNext article

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