Understanding curriculum as normalizing text: disability studies meet curriculum theory

Author: Erevelles, Nirmala

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, Volume 37, Number 4, July 2005 , pp. 421-439(19)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

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Abstract:

Although post-structuralists within curriculum studies have examined many contexts of curriculum theory, they have been silent on disability. This silence is worthy of study, especially because of the growing significance of disability studies in the humanities and the social sciences. I question post-structuralist arguments in curriculum theory from the epistemological standpoint of disability studies. I extend the post-structuralist project of deconstructing and reinterpreting text to examine the material implications derived from interpretations of normality as a discursive construction. I ask the following questions: What are the historical, social, and economic conditions that produce the distances and inter-relationships that exist between the `disabled' and the `normal' world? How do these conditions prevent scholars from providing emancipatory representations of Otherness? How can educators construct a curriculum that can produce oppositional knowledges that will contribute to the possibility of not just textual but also material and social transformation for all students?

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0022027032000276970

Publication date: 2005-07-01

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