‘I connected’: reflection and biography in teacher learning toward inclusion

Abstract

In this paper I examine the ways that prospective teachers studying in a university‐based, graduate‐level teacher education programme engage in reflection toward making meaning of disability. I focus on the background experiences, identities, and knowledge that teachers draw from to make meaning of social and cultural models of disability, and which relate to their developing ideas about inclusive teaching practices. Providing prospective teachers a forum to reflect and find connections between their experiences — more often as persons who do not identify as disabled — and persons with disabilities suggests one way that teacher educators can build curriculum that counters a perception of students labelled with disabilities as ‘others’, and subsequently supports teachers to propose directions for inclusive teaching.