“No! Turn the Pages!” Repositioning Neuroqueer Literacies

Abstract

Recent literacy research has made substantial contributions to expanding definitions of literacies beyond stringent parameters of decoding print. These inquiries have intersected with topics such as multimodality and critical literacy in general education literacy classrooms. However, students in isolated special education settings labeled with dis/abilities such as autism or intellectual disability often only receive reading instruction emphasizing functional skills and sight words. The data for this study emerged from a secondary isolated special education classroom where students identified as significantly dis/abled responded to inclusive picturebooks. Analysis is framed by the scholarship on neurological queerness. Findings illustrate how students engage in literacy practices via neuroqueer asocial actions and embodied inventions when they are presumed as competent by teachers and staff. These findings challenge deficit orientations guiding special education literacy instruction and offer implications and openings for continuing to expand who counts as literate and what counts as literacy.

DisCrit Literacies: Early Childhood Teachers Critically Reading School as Text and Imagining an Otherwise

“…Moreover, she named taken‐for‐granted expectations surrounding literate engagement as a sociopolitical practice (Street, 2005; Winn, 2011), which she guessed her teaching supervisors might be invested in. Contending with her own feelings about this practice, Lauren refused narrowly defined participation expectations, and accepted asociality and embodied expressions (e.g., rocking, swaying, verbal tics) as legitimate responses to literacy events (Flewitt et al, 2009; Kleekamp, 2020). Through this process, she considered the possibilities of critically inquiring into notions of “engagement” with her entire class.…”

“Just Bring Me Some Books to Read”: Exploring Parental Literacy Narratives Within the Dis/ability Community

“…Through these connections, parents and students alike can come to know themselves and one another better and understand complex concepts like dis/ability. We can create and foster these environments by engaging in the following practices: Share and provide children’s and young adult literature that feature humanizing representations of dis/ability (Gilmore & Howard, 2016; Kleekamp & Zapata, 2019); Teach dis/ability studies to our colleagues and students through workshops and curriculum that prompt reflection on our biases about and understandings of dis/ability (Ware & Hatz, 2016); Presume competence in our students and their families and push against deficient views of students that carry dis/ability labels by broadening the scope of how students and their families may participate in our classroom communities (Kleekamp, 2020); Listen to and center the voices of the dis/ability community in our classrooms and beyond (Wong, 2020). …”

“…■ Presume competence in our students and their families and push against deficient views of students that carry dis/ability labels by broadening the scope of how students and their families may participate in our classroom communities (Kleekamp, 2020);…”

“yeet nitro boosted”: A Postdigital Perspective on Young People’s Literacy Engagements With the Discord Platform

“…It is difficult to overstate the influence of Heath’s and Street’s conceptual innovations on literacy teaching, learning, and scholarship. As recent research on literacy practices and literacy events makes clear (e.g., Deroo & Watson, 2020; Kleekamp, 2020; Truman et al, 2021), the dual concepts of literacy practices and literacy events have helped scholars open up the black box of literacy in support of equitable literacy development and expression across ages, languages, contexts, and identities, doing so by troubling what it means for something to be integral to the practice of literacy.…”