.......................................................................................................................................... ii

https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8283&context=etd

Measuring Up: Standardized Testing and the Making of Postwar American Identities, 1940-2001

Returning special education students to regular classrooms: Externalities on peers’ reading scores

Whereas there has been increased attention paid to accommodations for neurodiverse populations in education and the workplace, the way cultural institutions—including museums, art galleries and other public collections— are able to support such an audience remains understudied. The educational support afforded by law for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is prescriptive and includes Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) with educa-tors trained in providing identified intervention strategies. At the same time, there have been no such agreed upon strategies to support the same population in public educational spaces, especially later in life as adults, who often go undiagnosed. This study seeks to reconsider the role of cultural institutions in serving the neurodiverse population beyond childhood and provide practical strategies to address their needs. Through programs that include staff training and programming that goes beyond “sensory days,” institutions can ensure that the educational opportunities afforded by their collections can support greater inclusivity and diversity.

/pdf/neurodivergence-and-inclusivity-in-cultural-institutions-a-2xwrtihl.pdf

Neurodivergence and Inclusivity in Cultural Institutions: A Review of Theories and Best Practices

For many years, museum education practice has been guided by the watchword inclusion – an ideal for public service and professional practice rooted in more than a century of work to expand museum audiences. Most museum educators would likely say that they embrace the intention to be inclusive practitioners, a commitment fostered by the likes of the Inclusive Museum Research Network (founded 2008), The Incluseum (founded 2012), MASS Action (launched 2016), and many other professional associations, grassroots groups, institutional initiatives, and individual leaders. But throughout this phase of our profession’s development, there’s been an odd parallax – our work toward inclusion has often remained separate from, or has completely overlooked, disability as a dimension of identity. Instead, the tendency has been to view inclusion for people with disabilities as a need for “access,” a concept that leads us into a focus on physical affordances, legal compliance, or accommodation, rather than a fundamental mindset of allyship with people with disabilities as active (or potential) museum users, learners, and workers. This dichotomy is rooted in part in the progression through which disability consciousness initially permeated museums. As the authors relate, when disability awareness first began to arise in museum institutions, it was through a rights-based framework – a response to the demands and standards of new legislation in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). These entry points brought with them a legalistic focus on the built or designed environment, demands for workplace and public accommodation, and actionable standards for statutory compliance. These origins laid a path in which disability access escaped wider affirmation as an element of inclusive practice, instead reducing them to a checklist of accommodations to follow, or as Eisenhauer Richardson calls it here in “Museum Education for Disability Justice and Liberatory Access,” an “etiquette course” in appropriate language and pedagogy. This mechanistic and legalistic approach has sometimes led to a certain anxiety amongst museum practitioners, reflected in commonly heard questions: What should we be doing to make our museum accessible? What are we required to do? Have we done enough? Is it possible to do everything? In many cases, our field’s guiding resources and professional literature have not yet supported a shift away from the deficit-based framing that positions disability as a problem to be solved. The manual of practice Museum Administration 2.0, for example, houses its primary discussion of disability in the chapter titled “Legal Issues.” The American Alliance of Museums’ page on Accessibility takes a “fix-it” approach as well, listing how-to articles about accommodation technologies and program formats. Individual museums often make one or two major moves

Disability and the Inclusive Intention

ABSTRACT The DisOrdinary Architecture Project was co-founded in 2008 by Zoe Partington, a partially blind artist who has a chronic condition, and Jos Boys, to promote activity that develops and captures models of new practice for the built environment, led by the creativity and experiences of disabled and Deaf artists. Since then, through this platform, diverse disabled artists have been working with students, educators, museums, galleries, architectural professionals and other cultural practitioners to co-explore innovative and creative ways to think about improving access, equality and inclusion. In this article, framed as a conversation between the DisOrdinary’s two founders and co-directors, we link disability arts and activism to wider artistic and campaigning practices for inclusion. We explore what alternative kinds of museum and gallery spaces we need, and also their underpinning archival, curatorial and educational practices. How can we unlock the potential for change by ensuring excluded people are at the heart of decision-making? What are the barriers? What kinds of critical and provocative creativity can unlock disabled people’s stories and artifacts, as a vital part of our heritage and learning?

Abandoned in the Archives? Collaborating with Disabled People Towards More Inclusive Spaces

Accountability incentives and academic achievement: Distributional impacts of accountability when standards are set low

ABSTRACT This article engages crip theory and concepts from Critical Disability Studies to frame museum education through critical access and disability justice to center disabled, Mad, and neurodiverse audiences in public practice. The authors introduce and define key concepts and ask questions to cultivate liberatory access for museum education. Theoretical concepts include (1) critical access and “leadership of those most impacted,” (2) crip time and flexibility, and (3) curatorial care and collective responsibility. By engaging the work of crip knower-makers, we elucidate the ways in which these three areas can inform a politics of relation and pedagogical practices. In essence, we propose liberatory access and a pedagogy in solidarity with the disability justice movement, as a reorientation through which disabled people are not invited to participate in an able-bodied, inaccessible space, but where we all venture toward a world of solidarity to inhabit alongside one another.

J.T. Richardson

Papers

Accountability incentives and academic achievement: Distributional impacts of accountability when standards are set low

Museum Education for Disability Justice and Liberatory Access