This qualitative study is based on the narratives of two families who each parent a young disabled child. It focuses on the children’s and families’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion within educational settings and the implications of these experiences for pedagogical change. New Zealand’s policy and curriculum contexts are considered in relation to education, disability and inclusion. I examine how the families’ perspectives and experiences interact with dominant, deficit discourses of disability. In my interpretation of the family narratives I identify particular disciplinary mechanisms that operate as tools and tactics of disabling power-knowledge production (Foucault, 1977, 1980). I argue that the policing of disabled children and families’ participation are primary processes and outcomes of these disciplinary mechanisms. The study uses a Disability Studies in Education (DSE) framework to understand and approach disability as socially, politically and culturally constructed. The assumptions underlying traditional Western educational knowledge and norms are critiqued from a counter-narrative based on experiences of disability. I use DSE research and literature to challenge knowledge regimes that interpret disability as an individual deficit requiring ‘special’ intervention and treatment. I argue that a ‘disability critique’ makes an important contribution to understanding the workings and effects of Western, Eurocentric knowledge traditions on children and families. This research further argues that exclusion is experienced by those within and outside of the dominant culture. I envisage the main research audience of this thesis to be early childhood and primary school teachers, teacher educators, early intervention and special education personnel, therapists and medical professionals. The stories and experiences of the families in this research may support teachers and other professionals to critically reflect on, and make changes to their thinking and practices. I hope to contribute to the growing body of research that can be used to support parents and families of disabled children in their efforts to promote educational change and to support the full inclusion of their children as valued people and learners within their educational contexts. I develop two main arguments in this research. The first is that in order to transform education, deficit discourses and their effects must be named and understood. The second is that New Zealand educationalists can build on existing, local frameworks to develop critical, narrative and relational pedagogies to transform exclusionary power relations and support inclusive experiences for all children and their families. I argue that approaches to disability and education based on a belief that exclusion is ‘inevitable’ and that creating a fully inclusive education system and society is an impossible dream, should be challenged and rejected. A lack of optimism and vision reproduces exclusion, and leads to weak reforms at best. Disabled children and their families deserve and have a right to an inclusive life and education and this requires people at all levels of society to take responsibility.

Thesis advisor: Patrick Proctor / Youth of color are owed an “education debt” from this country, built on systems that sought to disenfranchise people of color, from colonialism and slavery to legacies of redlining and present-day criminalization practices (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Black, Indigenous and Latinx youth have consistently been pushed out of schools at higher rates than other groups (Morris, 2016). In recognizing this problem, this dissertation examined the ways that one alternative program in an urban-area in the Northeast sought to re-engage youth of color through emancipatory pedagogical models. All students, except for one, were youth of color with the majority of students being of Caribbean origin (i.e. Haitian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Trinidadian, St. Lucian, Jamaican). In examining a need for emancipatory pedagogies, I conducted interviews with alumni and focus groups with current students to understand the multitude of reasons that students had been pushed out of traditional schools in their previous educational experiences. I then conducted interviews with past and present staff, as well as observations in the program, to understand the different pedagogies that were created that promoted decolonization and liberation in this particular alternative program. I then analyzed the short and long-term impacts of the program, primarily in understanding how the program shaped student identities. This study employed a qualitative approach, including a Youth Participatory Action Research component, to examine the factors listed above. MAXQDA was used to code transcripts of focus groups and interviews to determine themes in understanding the development and impact of emancipatory pedagogical models. Findings indicated the importance of creating a foundation for emancipatory pedagogies through staff spaces and conversations to understand implicit biases and teaching philosophies. This work should then be enhanced by building deep and supportive relationships with students and teaching in ways that uplift students’ cultures and promote critical consciousness. Key impacts of these pedagogies were found in racial identity, which was tied to gender identity and academic identity. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This decolonizing interpretive analysis serves to provide bicultural researchers the opportunity to engage and challenge the dominant literature on pedagogy, curriculum, methodology, and schooling. Bicultural researchers have been forced to navigate the dialectical social terrain of dominant/subordinate tensions and contradictions, as part of their process of survival, as subaltern or subordinate cultural citizens and critical scholars. This study seeks to deconstruct Eurocentric epistemicides that compartmentalize knowledge, particularly within the fields of theology and education. Western Christianity tends to separate God from humanity. This is an epistemological problem. The nature of this study necessitates a process by which critical theory, critical pedagogy, and liberation theology serve to reconstruct traditional Westernized notions of the interrelatedness of theology and education. This study seeks to determine what can be learned from a critical pedagogy of Jesus Christ by examining His integration of theology and pedagogy as presented in His praxis detailed in the New Testament. Jesus is positioned as the literal embodiment of both theology and pedagogy, where both are procured through praxis for liberation, resulting in an emancipatory pedagogy that reconciles humanity back to God and God to humanity.

Adults working as teachers and doctors can find it difficult to communicate well with young people about the issues that affect their wellbeing and learning and thus miss opportunities to contribute when their clients experience adversity. Drama is often used as a pedagogical tool to assist people to develop their communication skills. Dramatic portrayals however, can reinforce rather than challenge limiting stereotypes, and there is the potential for learning through drama to contribute to a patronising world-view and lead to the assumption that a set of formulaic approaches can bridge the communication divide. There is thus a need for research that engages both theoretically and technically with the use of drama as a tool for applied learning. In this thesis, a reflective practitioner methodology is used to explore the use of drama as a method in participatory enquiry and as a tool in the professional education of teachers and doctors. Use of the practitioner perspective permits analysis of the alignment between theory and practice. The Learning Partnerships project provides the context within which to conduct this enquiry. In this project the researcher leads drama workshops that bring together classes of school students and tertiary students completing their studies in medicine or education. The adolescents work as co-investigators with the teachers and doctors, exploring how to communicate effectively in the institutional contexts of schools and clinics.