The story of educator David Connor is also, as it turns out, the story of the unfolding relationship between special education and disability studies in the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. With clarity and humor, as well as love and gratitude for his students and colleagues over the years, Connor weaves his memoir with honesty, compassion, and a keen intelligence. Contemplating Dis/ability in Schools and Society will be treasured by teachers, professors, and others committed to making public education more humane and just for all students, their teachers, and society more broadly.

- Sonia Nieto, University of Massachusetts,

In this autoethnographic memoir, David Connor intimately reflects on thirty years as a (special) educator. Organizing the memoir around his career trajectory, Connor compellingly narrates a series of personal and professional experiences beginning with his life as a new teacher, and later as a doctoral student, college professor, and finally, department chairperson. Throughout the book, Connor acknowledges the tensions and conflicted feelings that are shared by many of us whose scholarly work is situated in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) but whose faculty and teaching responsibilities reside in special education programs. David Connor is a prolific writer and compelling scholar whose contributions to education, and DSE in particular, are significant due to the breadth of topics studied and the depth of scrutiny and analysis applied to each project.

- Susan L. Gabel, Wayne State University,

This book chronicles the professional life of a career-long, inclusive educator in New York City through eight different stages in special and general education. Developing a new approach to research as part of qualitative methodology, David J. Connor merges the academic genre of autoethnography with memoir to create a narrative that engages the reader through stories of personal experiences within the professional world that politicized him as an educator. After each chapter’s narrative, a systematic analytic commentary follows that focuses on: teaching and learning in schools and universities; the influence of educational laws; specific models of disability and how influence educators and educational researchers; and educational structures and systems—including their impact on social, political, and cultural experiences of people with disabilities. This autoethnographic memoir documents, over three decades, the relationship between special and general education, the growth of the inclusion movement, and the challenge of special education as a discrete academic field. As part of a national group of critical special educators, Connor describes the growth of counter-theory through the inception and subsequent growth of DSE as a viable academic field, and the importance of rethinking human differences in new ways.
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This book chronicles the life of an inclusive educator through eight different stages of his career, from classroom teacher to college professor. Analysis of this rich narrative reveals complexities of how both the field of education’s knowledge base and existing educational systems impact lives of children, teachers, and researchers.
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A Note from the Editor Note to the Reader Preface: From World’s End to World’s Center Introduction Chapter 1: Classroom Teacher Chapter 2: Staff Developer Chapter 3: Doctoral Student Chapter 4: Teacher Coach Chapter 5: College Professor Chapter 6: Scholar Chapter 7: Doctoral Faculty Chapter 8: Department Chairperson Epilogue Acknowledgments Appendix References About the Author
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781498568210
Publisert
2018-07-15
Utgiver
Vendor
Lexington Books
Vekt
630 gr
Høyde
239 mm
Bredde
161 mm
Dybde
26 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
320

Forfatter

Biographical note

David J. Connor is professor of special education/learning disabilities at Hunter College