BEYOND THE RAMP: DISABILITY IN THE COLLEGE COMPOSITION CLASSROOM
Landmark legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 have laid the legal groundwork for greater numbers of students with disabilities to access higher education. According to the most recent data available, the number of undergraduate students with disabilities enrolled in postsecondary institutions has risen considerably in just over a decade: from about 11.3% in the 2003-04 academic year to 19.4% in 2015-16 (Ehlinger and Ropers 1). Like the open enrollment boom of the 1970s when universities opened admissions to a larger and more diverse student population, this increase has tasked writing instructors and Writing Program Administrators (WPAs) to consider the accessibility and effectiveness of their writing programs for an increasingly diverse group of student bodies. As Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Brenda Jo Brueggemann argue, disability does impact the college classroom and often elicits powerful, unexpected questions like, “What social, physical, and learning barriers complicate access to learning for disabled students?” and “How can we better understand learning and writing as embodied practices, foregrounding bodily difference instead of demanding bodily perfection?” (2-3). In response, scholars have turned to the field of Disability Studies for insight on how to improve writing curricula, pedagogies, and writing classrooms themselves to better support students with disabilities.
The academic discipline of Disability Studies (DS) emerged over the last forty years in part as a reaction to the dominant ‘medical model’ that viewed disability as a deficiency and therefore focused on ‘fixing’ people or otherwise trying to make them fit into ‘normal’ society. DS scholars, however, approached the topic of disability from the perspective of disabled people and viewed barriers for the disabled as socially constructed. The ‘social model’ of disability posits that it is society itself that disables people by erecting physical and social barriers that limit access and assign stigma to people with disabilities. In “Disability Studies in Composition: Position Statement on Policy and Best Practices,” the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) state that “the questions posed by disability studies ask us to rethink language, the body, the environment, identity, culture, power, and the nature of knowledge itself, enabling a meaningful engagement at multiple levels: bodily, personal, social, cultural, and political.” Incorporating the principles of DS into the writing classroom can disrupt the ableist notions of normalcy, authority, difference, and ‘equitable’ assessment that stigmatize students with disabilities and cause them problems completing their programs or achieving GPAs “well below those of their nondisabled peers” (Lewiecki-Wilson and Brueggemann 4).
Disability Studies uses disability as a critical lens to critique and interrogate nearly all disciplines: from history, religion, art, philosophy, and literature to the fields of medicine, architecture, and education. This project is focused on applications of Disability Studies to the field of education, particularly the college writing classroom, and is primarily interested in how an instructor can meaningfully incorporate disability studies into their pedagogy and curriculum without completely overhauling their syllabus. In some First-Year Writing programs, for example, instructors have little autonomy in selecting readings and setting assignments; these courses are often standardized by the department. Heeding Ella R. Browning’s warning to avoid simply “tacking on” attention to disability to an existing curriculum, I explore some of the rhetorical approaches and pedagogical strategies offered by scholars of writing and Disability Studies to assist instructors in making their courses more accessible and to help all students, regardless of their (dis)ability, “consider, explore, and articulate nonnormative embodied experiences in meaningful ways, even within a standardized composition curriculum” (98).
One of the primary pedagogical approaches to incorporating DS into the composition classroom is through the strategic use of Universal Design (UD), a foundational principle in the field of Disability Studies. Jay Dolmage defines UD as “the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design” (24). Designers working under this concept are charged with designing their products and/or spaces to be flexible, equitable, simple, intuitive, efficient, and accessible. One of the central tenets of UD is that it helps all people, regardless of their ability; Dolmage suggests that many of the technologies we now take for granted, ones that improved everyone’s quality of life, were originally designed for people with disabilities: the typewriter, the stereo recorder, the flatbed scanner, and email, for example (25). Curb cuts on sidewalks, sloped entrances, door handles that do not require a grip, and large or color-contrasting fonts are also examples of UD that improve all users’ quality of life, regardless of ability. While UD does not eliminate challenges, its implementation does remove barriers to access.
More than helping to organize the spaces we inhabit or the tools we use, UD can also be used to design pedagogy, as Dolmage notes has been done by institutions like Ohio State University and the University of Washington (24). He and other scholars argue that in both theory and practice we can incorporate principles of UD into teaching composition to create “an enabling space for writing and a way to think broadly about ability” (15). In the pedagogy of a composition classroom, UD principles include encouraging collaboration and cooperative learning, diversifying media and modes of composition, fluctuating teaching methods, and allowing students to show their knowledge in a variety of ways. Teachers are encouraged to “permit” rather than “limit,” “guide” rather than “direct,” “clarify” rather than “repeat,” and “review” rather than “test” (Dolmage 24). Bess Fox focuses on UD’s emphasis on diversifying media and modes of composition to argue that it forces students to think consciously of their unique audiences’ bodies and brains, which helps them to become more conscious of their own writing body (276). It is important to note, however, that UD alone does not make classroom spaces more accessible or welcoming of difference. Grier-Reed and Williams-Wengerd highlight the fact that UD has been criticized for not recognizing diversity “beyond disability” and therefore call for writing instructors to support UD with a culturally sustaining pedagogy where all students are viewed as unique and constructivist approaches to teaching and learning where knowledge is created between teacher and student rather than simply transmitted by the teacher (167). The authors’ argument illustrates that DS challenges ableist notions of authority in the classroom and calls for approaches to teaching where students, regardless of their (dis)ability, play a vital role in the creation of knowledge.
Meaningfully integrating DS into the composition classroom goes beyond ensuring the physical classroom environment is accessible and is a larger than any single assignment. From the beginning of an academic term to the moment when grades are entered, there are several places where instructors and WPAs can ensure that DS principles that benefit all students’ learning are incorporated into their classrooms. In what follows, I will describe how scholars have articulated how DS can be used to inform writing and composition pedagogy and curriculum across four often-overlapping areas in a typical course: academic accommodations, the syllabus, through “cripping” and “hacking” the curriculum, and assessment. I have chosen these particular areas of concern or methodologies to show that in every step of course planning, the ideas and lessons of DS can be meaningfully introduced to writing instruction.
Accommodations
The approach used by most colleges and their writing programs to address the needs of students with disabilities focuses on academic accommodations. In the context of Disability Studies, academic accommodations fit squarely into the medical model view of disability: it is a deficit that requires an accommodation to fix. Dolmage describes how universities “retrofit” their campuses and curricula by adding ramps to the sides of buildings or accommodations to the standard curriculum – in effect, universities provide a workaround to the “steep steps” they’ve constructed to their “ivory towers” that were originally built upon standards meant keep certain bodies and minds out (18). In this metaphor, disability still cannot enter through the front; retrofitting is inherently uncreative, generally forced or mandated, and an afterthought. In addition, Grier-Reed and Williams-Wengerd describe the accommodation process at most universities as putting the onus on the student to self-identify as having a disability, request an accommodation, and communicate the accommodation to the instructor (1). As Wood and Madden state, it is up to the student to identify as disabled and disclose their disability to their professor. This practice can have the effect of stigmatizing students with disabilities, many of whom choose not to report their disability at all for fear of being marked as a “remedial” student.
The Syllabus
Often the syllabus is the first text with which a student interacts with their instructor and the course. As such, Wood and Madden argue in their PraxisWiki entry for the journal Kairos that the syllabus functions rhetorically and has consequences for how students understand the classroom atmosphere, their teacher’s expectations and intended relationship to them, and whether they think they can succeed in the course. Wood and Madden offer a variety of tips for instructors seeking to incorporate the principles of Disability Studies into their syllabi and curriculum: advocating for Universal Design in their classroom space as well as their curriculum, including a collaborative element or assignment allowing students to become familiar with the social aspects of writing, incorporating flexibility for different modes of learning as well as assessment and delivery, and perhaps most importantly, crafting an effective statement on disability and accommodations.
Aside from giving the statement high priority on the syllabus and customizing the boilerplate language usually provided by the school or institution, Wood and Madden suggest considering the title of the statement itself. The authors suggest “Accommodation Statement,” “Inclusion Statement,” or “Statement of Commitment to Universal Design for Learning” as examples that resist the “disparaging rhetorical positioning” of “Disability Statement.” The authors are careful to caution, however, that in resisting the traditional disability terminology, teachers risk erasing students with disabilities or those who do not understand UD to be addressing the needs of students with disabilities. Ross and Browning point to the ADA as a well-meaning act that contributes to the problem of rendering students with disabilities invisible: the law prevents universities from seeking information about disability as part of the admission process, but this law “renders opaque” how many students with disabilities attend a certain institution (3). Because students must self-identify as disabled to access accommodations, it is crucially important for instructors to recognize that their syllabus’ statement on accommodations is often the first and best opportunity for students to discuss (dis)ability with their instructor.
“Cripping” and “Hacking” the Curriculum
The inadequacy of common academic accommodations for people with disabilities was Tara Wood’s initial research ‘problem,’ but she came to find that inventing ‘new’ accommodations for the writing classroom could only uphold the current accommodation system informed by the medical model of disability: “individual-based fix-its applied to specific students in specific situations” (262). To counter this, Wood shares findings from her study on the experiences of students with disabilities in college-level writing courses and finds that instructors may enforce normative conceptions of time and time frames on students whose experiences and processes contradict such required measures of time. Classrooms adhere to normative time frames almost by definition – students are expected to arrive at a certain time, learn information at a particular speed, and perform in prescribed time frames. Arguing that traditional, normative ideas of time and production can negatively impact student performance, Wood offers the concept of “crip time,” a concept borrowed from disability theorists and disability activists, as a possible pedagogical framework for composition classrooms.
As Neil Simpkins describes it, cripping is a “conceptual practice of decentering normatively embodied experiences and epistemologies” (Simpkins 9). Victoria Lewis explains that “crip” emerged in the 1970s as an “in-group” word meant to avoid the “syrupy” nature of alternative terms like “handicapable” and describes a “sensibility, identity, or activity in opposition to mainstream assumptions about disability” (Lewis 47). Crip time can thus be understood to refer to flexible approaches to normative time frames and recognizing that people will arrive and process language at various rates; it is an approach to time that does not rely on compulsory able-bodiedness. Wood offers the example of creating assignments with scaffolded exercises that allow for freewriting and follow-up exercises that encourage revision and reflection of student drafts. Rather than assigning a project with one final due date, which emphasizes only the final product and does not offer support along the way, scaffolded assignments allow students to work at a more comfortable pace and provide more opportunities for instructor feedback. Implementing crip time is not about adding more time, but about “flexibly managing, negotiating, and experiencing time” (278). Simpkins advocates for teachers to embrace crip time by focusing on “writing about writing,” which he believes students may need in order to “square” crip time and academic time (9). As an example, Simpkins suggests teaching students how to communicate about disability and time related needs by teaching them how to navigate genres of writing, such as emailing a professor for an extension or reaching out to campus support services. On the other hand, Ross and Browning note that scaffolded assignments can be a “barrier” for students with disabilities affecting their memory, time management, organization, or involve OCD or perfectionism (Ross and Browning 4). Crucially, then, Wood asserts that methods such as implementing crip time should be negotiated with disabled students, not simply for them.
Wood offers cripping time as a way to think about how normativity is privileged in most of the pedagogical practices of a writing classroom, but she sees cripping time as a way to open up possibilities of nonnormative composing and student/instructor negotiations of time. While scholars like Wood and Simpkins explore how the writing classroom can be “cripped,” Bre Garrett offers the metaphor of “hacking” as another strategy for making writing education and pedagogy more accessible without a complete overhaul of the curriculum. Garrett argues that teachers and WPAs can “hack” standard curricular spaces to make their pedagogies more accessible and inclusive by bringing disability discourse into curricular design. Like the concept of cripping, Garrett conceives of hacking as a process of disrupting the infrastructures and ideologies that “fetishize” the composed text, and by extension, “the composed body” (2).
Garrett offers the concept of Writing Studio Design to “disable composition as standard practice” by instituting an “open-access curricular space that reconfigures practice as usual” (1). Garrett’s Writing Studio is a peer-driven workshop approach where each session focuses on a portion of writing rather than a complete text. Class size is capped at 5-10 students, and activities may include decrypting a project prompt, critically reading teacher or peer comments on a written project, or exploring resources like how to conduct library research. Critically, teachers do not assign writing projects. Rather, students come to class with writing tasks from other classes; the class agenda is student-generated and based on students’ writings from their other classes. Garrett claims that the studio approach promotes writers’ interdependence, “out of which develops writer agency and confidence” (1). For Garrett, Studio disrupts the typical mode of pedagogical delivery from teacher to student by giving students the power to take on leadership roles and set the agenda for their own writing goals. Recognizing the institutional and financial barriers to instituting the Writing Studio, Garrett suggests that instructors can “hack” their existing courses by infusing “studio moments” into general classes with an embedded studio model (12). This can be accomplished by hacking composing processes by foregrounding invention as a recursive practice, hacking the traditional separation between disciplines by using discourses and modes from other disciplines, and hacking the linguistic-centric mode of writing by creating space for aural and vocal experimentation, memory work, and breath work.
Assessment
The goal of assessment is to give students the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge and competence of course content and for instructors to share feedback on their progress. For students with disabilities, however, demonstrating this knowledge and competence can be difficult when assessment practices are based on ableist ideas of normalcy and mastery. For example, if active participation in classroom discussion is a required component of an instructor’s grading scheme, students who experience discomfort speaking in front of large groups or are otherwise unable to effectively communicate in this way will require adjustments in assessment practices. Scholars working at the intersection of Disability Studies and writing studies have therefore identified some strategies to help ensure more fair assessment practices.
Invoking the work of Foucault and Inoue, Charlesia McKinney describes this issue as a matter of interrogating power and fairness in the classroom. Traditional classroom structures position students as “passive listeners” and teachers as “knowledge givers,” and this model is replicated in traditional writing assignments that position students as ‘submitting’ themselves for teacher approval in the form of feedback and grading practices (3). McKinney claims that while many teachers pursue “fairness” in an attempt to engender equity in their assessment practices, “fairness often means flattening student ability by forcing all students to perform and be evaluated in one particular way,” relying on the instructor’s definition of fairness (3). Like Inoue, McKinney instead argues for teachers to reject ‘fairness,’ which she argues erases the body and does not account for difference, in place of “being not unfair,” which allows for the consideration of the individual and their unique characteristics (3). In other words, McKinney and Inoue argue that teachers must understand that their often-implicit biases against particular bodies, can impact the outcomes of their assessment, and teachers must therefore actively resist the urge to “flatten” the bodies and minds they are assessing.
Bess Fox argues that DS can disrupt the “fundamental and damaging” compulsion to produce “disembodied, efficient writers and orderly texts” by showcasing the desirability of the disabled perspective and changing the questions teachers ask of student drafts (276). Patricia A. Dunn agrees, arguing that “too many” teachers still stress the correctness of the finished product to the exclusion of “invention, arrangement, and style” (19). Both authors therefore argue for teacher comments on drafts to avoid questions meant to erase writing that is disorderly such as “Can this be made clearer?” or “Are you being contradictory?” and opt instead for questions that “embrace writing as disorderly,” such as “How can we crip it?” or “What ideologies or norms are at work in this text that need to be cripped?” (Fox 276). Dunn acknowledges “that well-edited, meticulously proofread prose is something all writers should know how to produce,” but she argues that undertaking the copyediting steps too soon can “interrupt fluency and interfere with higher-order generating and organizing thought processes” (19). Instructor comments that embrace the messy, disordered nature of the writing process help students to see that their own messy writing experiences are not individual failures but are in fact part of writing itself.
Conclusion
Disability Studies asks writing teachers to view their students’ diverse bodies and minds as a resource, to think critically about the power of language and its effects, to see what role the body plays in the writing process, and to consider the accessibility of their spaces and assignments. Incorporating the principles of DS into the writing classroom can disrupt the ableist notions of normalcy, authority, ownership, difference, and ‘equitable’ assessment that stigmatize and punish students with disabilities. It is important to remember, however, that DS research is not guided by “fixing” or “dealing with” disabled students; DS scholars argue that physical and social contexts are what need “fixing,” not individuals. The strategies presented by scholars for rectifying teaching approaches and writing classrooms themselves, especially through the implementation of Universal Design, are meant to improve access and education for all learners, not just learners with disabilities.
WORKS CITED
Browning, Ella R. “Disability Studies in the Composition Classroom.” Composition Studies, vol. 42, no. 2, 2014, pp. 96-116.
“Disability Studies in Composition: Position Statement on Policy and Best Practices.” NCTE, National Council of Teachers of English, 31 Mar. 2020, https://ncte.org/statement/disabilitypolicy/.
Dolmage, Jay. “Mapping Composition: Inviting Disability in the Front Door.” Disability and the Teaching of Writing: A Critical Sourcebook, edited by Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2008, pp. 14-27.
Dunn, Patricia A. “Re-Seeing (Dis)Ability: Ten Suggestions.” English Journal, vol. 100, no. 2, 2010, pp. 14-26.
Ehlinger, Emily and Rebecca Ropers. “"It's All About Learning as a Community": Facilitating the Learning of Students with Disabilities in Higher Education Classrooms.” Journal of College Student Development, vol. 61, no. 3, 2020, pp. 333-49.
Fox, Bess. “Embodying the Writer in the Multimodal Classroom through Disability Studies.” Computers and Composition, vol. 30, no. 4, 2013, pp. 266-82.
Garrett, Bre. “Hacking the Curriculum, Disabling Composition Pedagogy: The Affordances of Writing Studio Design.” Composition in the Presence of Disability, special issue of Composition Forum, vol. 39, Summer 2018.
Grier-Reed, Tabitha and Anne Williams-Wengerd. “Integrating Universal Design, Culturally Sustaining Practices, and Constructivism to Advance Inclusive Pedagogy in the Undergraduate Classroom.” Education Sciences, vol. 8, no. 4, 2018, pp. 167-80.
Lewiecki-Wilson, Cynthia and Brenda Jo Brueggemann. Introduction. Disability and the Teaching of Writing: A Critical Sourcebook, edited by Lewiecki-Wilson and Brueggemann, Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2008, pp. 1-9.
Lewis, Victoria Anne. “Crip.” Keywords for Disability Studies, edited by Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss and David Serlin, New York UP, 2015, pp. 46-47.
McKinney, Charlesia. “Reassessing Intersectionality: Affirming Difference in Higher Education.” Composition in the Presence of Disability, special issue of Composition Forum, vol. 39, Summer 2018.
Ross, Valerie and Ella Browning. “From Difference to Différence: Developing a Disability-Centered Writing Program.” Composition in the Presence of Disability, special issue of Composition Forum, vol. 39, Summer 2018.
Simpkins, Neil. “Towards an Understanding of Accommodation Transfer: Disabled Students’ Strategies for Navigating Classroom Accommodations.” Composition in the Presence of Disability, special issue of Composition Forum, vol. 39, Summer 2018.
Wood, Tara. “Cripping Time in the College Composition Classroom.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 69, no. 2, pp. 260-86.
Wood, Tara and Shannon Madden. “Suggested Practices for Syllabus Accessibility Statements.” PraxisWiki, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 2014, https://praxis.technorhetoric.net/tiki-index.php?page=Suggested_Practices_for_Syllabus_Accessibility_Statements#Suggested_Practices_for_Syllabus_Accessibility_Statements.