An Introduction to Disability and Alternative Assessment Practices in Composition Classrooms

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Series: Disability and Alternative Assessment Practices in Composition Classrooms
Article 1: Foundation
By Grace Walraven

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Welcome to Chronically Academic! To launch this blog, I am beginning with a series of articles about how disability affects those in academia—with a focus on student experiences—and how alternative assessment practices, specifically in composition classrooms, can be implemented not just to accommodate disability, but to put it at the forefront of writing assessment.

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I will also discuss how keeping disability and marginality at the forefront of writing assessment can affect and benefit all students. The final article in this series will cover the practicalities of implementing alternative assessment practices in a composition classroom, as well as examples of activities, contracts, and assignments.

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Please note that these articles are meant to discuss disability, academia, and assessment practices at the postsecondary level. However, that does not prohibit the discussion from extending to primary and secondary education; those levels are simply outside the parameters of this series.

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This first article will cover a lot of ground. I will discuss what “disability” is and what disability studies entails. After defining dis/ability, I feel it is important to address the current disabled academic landscape, including available resources and problems with disclosure. Then I will move on to discussing what it means to bring disability studies methodology into academia and, more specifically, into composition classrooms.

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From there, the scope will narrow further. I will delve into disability in the composition classroom, asking how disability can affect writing assessment and how instructors can balance the needs of a composition curriculum with the needs of disabled students. This article is meant to provide a broad overview and lay the foundation for later articles in this series.

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Defining Dis/ability

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Let’s start simply with the Oxford English Dictionary definition:

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“Lack of ability (to discharge any office or function); inability, incapacity; weakness” (“Disability, n.”).

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The OED definition is broad. Denotatively and connotatively, the word disability carries significantly negative associations. However, if we continue our exploration of the word, we can see greater possibilities for understanding it.

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Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, in her chapter “Building a World with Disability in It,” argues that disability is a contradiction, being both “the master trope of human disqualification” and “the essential characteristic of being human” (qtd. in Garland-Thomson 51).

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This contradiction provides a striking image: a quality used to disqualify someone is also a quality that defines their humanness. I am of the opinion that dis/ability is a quality everyone has. No person can be defined only by normative successes without also accounting for the individual challenges they faced to achieve those successes.

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Furthermore, critical disability studies defines disability as more than a quality of an individual body:

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Disability is “not just a quality that characterizes a specific person’s body. It is also a construct that sorts bodyminds into categories that have to do with wholeness, brokenness, beauty, and wellness, which in turn supports structural inequities based on those categories. Thus, CDS understands disability as a construct that aids in upholding existing power relations and systems. At the same time, it emphasizes the importance of embodiment, lived experience, and relations from the micro (within bodyminds or between bodyminds) to the macro (institutions, cities, systems) level” (Price 19).

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The next question is: What are critical disability studies?

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Margaret Price, in Crip Spacetime: Access, Failure, and Accountability in Academic Life, describes critical disability studies as:

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“Less likely to ask, ‘How can we get more disabled people into tenured positions?’ than to ask, ‘How can we remake academe so that it’s more equitable for all, including disabled people?’ It regards disability as part of a larger system that labels some bodies deviant, broken, or subhuman” (Price 19).

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Price moves the discussion beyond simply increasing the number of disabled people in academia and toward studying the systemic changes needed to make academia more equitable, including for disabled people. Changing the discussion from simply providing access to providing equitable access is significant, and this discussion will be explored further in this series, specifically in relation to composition classrooms.

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The Current Disabled Academic Landscape

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In my experience, most universities have some form of disability office or department to help students access accommodations in housing and classrooms. However, the academic accommodations provided are often geared toward lecture- and exam-based classrooms, including notetakers, extended exam time, and distraction-free exam spaces.

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While all of those accommodations are important, they leave a large gap, particularly for discussion- and writing-based classrooms. They can also leave issues of time, labor, and how disabled students negotiate both unaddressed.

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Disabled faculty and instructors must also be considered. They are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act, but those protections do not eliminate stigmatization or the realities of generating knowledge as a disabled person (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). While faculty and instructor disability is outside the scope of this series, I felt the need to acknowledge the role it plays in academia.

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Disability in the Composition Classroom

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I mentioned above the need to address accommodations for discussion- and writing-based classrooms. In my experience, very few disability support offices provide accommodations such as extended time on an assignment. This can leave the negotiations of time and labor required for the assignment unaddressed.

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This leaves the question: Can writing assessments and composition classrooms meet the goals of the curriculum while appropriately keeping disabled students in mind?

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I would argue that the answer is yes.

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In the next article, I will discuss alternative forms of engagement and assessment practices that can be implemented in composition classrooms, which are predominantly assessed through formal academic writing.

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