Becoming a disabled teacher in initial teacher education programs

Abstract

Teacher training for inclusive education has been a central focus in public education policies to strengthen the inclusion of students with disabilities in the educational system. This aim has resulted in initial teacher training (ITT) programs that incorporate strategies to prepare able teachers for creating inclusive learning environments. However, this training presents tensions when it is experienced by students with disabilities who, while learning about inclusion, have a university context that reproduces ableist rational and normative notions of being a teacher. This article explores these contradictions by examining the university trajectories of two students with disabilities in pedagogy programs at Chilean universities. From critical disability studies, we analyze the “event” of becoming a disabled teacher in the ITT, through case studies that use in-depth interviews, materialities produced in a participatory workshop, and the analysis of public policies related to the ITT. This approach allows us to reveal how ITT affects the production of subjectivities, reproduces ableism, and stresses normative futures in educational contexts that, while searching for inclusion, continue to express structural contradictions.