Challenging hegemonic understandings in compulsory risk management and rehabilitation of intellectually disabled offenders through curriculum design
Margaret McLean and Frances Hartnett
Abstract
This article examines the possibilities for challenging hegemonic understandings associated with the rehabilitation of intellectually disabled offenders detained for compulsory care and management, through the design of a tertiary diploma programme. The curriculum was developed to prepare care co-ordinators and care managers appointed to administer a piece of New Zealand legislation, the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act 2003. The potential of curriculum to be counterhegemonic is examined in relation to curriculum theory, and the dilemmas and paradoxes inherent in the legislation. Student feedback indicated that a small number of practitioners who participated in the diploma programme were encouraged to challenge restrictive practices and attitudes.
This article examines the limits and possibilities of curriculum to challenge cultural pessimism about the possibility of obtaining a better life for offenders with an intellectual disability who are believed to pose a risk to public safety and who have been detained for compulsory supervision and management. Consideration is given to the counterhegemonic possibilities of curriculum through programme design. Thirty years ago Patti Lather (1984) observed that there was little focus either on the potential of curriculum to be counterhegemonic or how curriculum-mediated experience may promote emancipatory practices. In her view, a counterhegemonic curriculum had the potential to be a demonstration by ordinary people through their life and practice that “the world can be different” (Lather, 1984, p. 55). The curriculum knowledge for the programme discussed in this article encompasses the frameworks of critical social theory as a means to promote rational change, and disability studies as a pathway towards examining social inequalities based on the existence of disability.
The context for this examination was the challenge to design and teach a tertiary diploma to prepare health and disability professionals for new roles as care co-ordinators or care managers (Ministry of Health, 2004). These were statutory functions embedded in new legislation in New Zealand. The Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act 2003 (IDCCR) was enacted to provide judges with an alternative disposition to a jail term for people with intellectual disability charged with or convicted of criminal offending. We viewed the curriculum as a tool to draw the attention of the 69 disability support practitioners (25 care co-ordinators and 46 care managers) who completed the diploma over its 4-year life (2002–2005) to the implications of differing views of the proper way to treat offenders with an intellectual disability.
Our purpose in writing this article is to highlight the dilemma for educators considering the curriculum question posed by Pinar (2012, p. 53) “what knowledge is of most worth?” in a context of complex and conflicting interests. The competing interests germane to the management and rehabilitation of offenders with intellectual disabilities were those of society and public safety, the interests of those detained in compulsory care, and of the providers of care services. In addition, professional learning was to be accomplished in a political climate with an instrumentalist view of curriculum that emphasised “how to do it rather than why to do it” and where there was pressure for quick-fix solutions to social problems (Neyland, 2005, p. 111).
Our task as curriculum developers was to ensure that students were clear about the political requirements of the legislation and their powers and duties on the one hand, and on the other encouraged to ensure care recipients became equal and valuable citizens. In this way we hoped participants would begin to identify the life-defining impact prejudicial judgements had on care recipients. This purpose was consistent with Pinar’s position that the educational point of a curriculum is the development of understanding “that informs the ethical obligation to care for ourselves and our fellow human beings and enables us to think and act with intelligence, sensitivity and courage” (Pinar, 2012, p. 190).
The challenge of a legislative response to social problems
Changes to health policy and New Zealand’s mental-health legislation during the 1990s produced some unintended consequences. The first of these followed the removal of intellectual disability from the definition of mental disorder in the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992. Consequently, a group of people—mainly men with intellectual disability and possibly personality disorders who had committed serious offences of a sexual nature—were not only at risk of being forced to participate in legal proceedings where their intellectual disability precluded the possibility of a fair trial, but they were no longer eligible for treatment in facilities for persons with mental illness. The second unforeseen effect resulted from the policy of deinstitutionalisation of mental-health services occurring at the same time. For this group of people, alternative community-based service provisions were generally very poor or nonexistent (Brookbanks, 1995; Office of Disability Issues, 2011).
Public opinion, aroused by the threatened release of patients posing a high risk of serious sexual offending from closing psychiatric institutions, supported the view that a legislated system of compulsory care would protect the community from harm. The first draft of new legislation, the Intellectual Disability Compulsory Care Bill (1999), included the anticipatory containment of any persons who might possibly offend. This was critiqued during the select committee hearings as an excessively severe and unethical limitation of the rights of those at risk of detention and concerned with “public protection at the expense of the autonomy interests of intellectually disabled people themselves” (Brookbanks, 2003, p. 539). The revised legislation combined a managerial view of criminal justice that sorted offenders based on risk and danger to themselves and others with the more liberal concept of rehabilitation as redress for the circumstances that had led to offending. Rehabilitation became an important objective in the legislation because the select committee was convinced that people in compulsory care should be assisted to develop and maintain skills (Brookbanks, 2013).
The structure outlined in the IDCCR Act 2003, included the establishment of two new specialist services. The first was a small group of regional intellectual disability care agencies providing specialist needs assessment and service co-ordination. The second was a range of community based secure and supervised residential services known as regional intellectual disability supported accommodation services (RIDSAS) and restrictive “hospital secure” settings, the national and regional intellectual disability secure services.
Care co-ordinators employed in new regional intellectual disability care agencies were to complete the needs assessment and liaise with courts and other interested parties and designate specialist assessors and compulsory care facilities. The care managers—employees of new regional intellectual disability supported accommodation services, and national and regional intellectual disability secure services—were to develop and implement the care plan for each person referred, and carry out regular care reviews. The specified purpose of the training was to improve “the culture and environment within rehabilitation services” and meet the long-term objective of “the overall improvement (efficacy including qualitative aspects and cost effectiveness) and enrichment of the rehabilitation process for both the practitioner and the client and their family/whanau” (Clinical Training Agency, 2000, p. 1).
Designing the curriculum for the diploma offered the opportunity to assist this group of professionals to consider the dilemma that resulted from moving the obligation for the care of this group “from the penal and mental health systems into the intellectual disability sector” (Prebble et al., 2013, p. 113). The change left untouched the broad social conditions that gave rise to the range of inequalities affecting the lives of this group of people. Mindful that “curriculum design is not a matter of psychological manipulation but of the esthetic juxtaposition of academic knowledge addressed to students who may already be worldly-wise” (Pinar, 2012, p. 11), our challenge was to do this within the occupational framework set out in the legislation. If those managing the compulsory-care system were to come to understand themselves and the social circumstances affecting care recipients in a new way, it might be possible to change some unsatisfactory aspects of existing disability support systems. We hoped to develop their critical consciousness, alerting them to the beliefs that underpinned contemporary social views of the nature and interrelationship of intellectual disability and offending. To achieve this objective, students needed to get close to the real lives of those whose care they were charged with coordinating and managing.
Contradiction and the counterhegemonic potential of curriculum
Antonio Gramsci’s critical theory describes two social systems that exercise hegemonic power and influence. The first is the “apparatus of government”, through which the state and its legal system exercise coercive power. The second is civil society, the “private apparatus of hegemony” through which the social–psychological manipulation of societal consent occurs (Gramsci, 1930/2007, p. 108). The task of critical analysis for students completing the course was to recognise the impact of mistaking, as neutral and natural, the effects of hegemonic perceptions on the lives of care recipients.
Adult education, viewed from within the framework of critical theory, is assigned transformative potential. In this paradigm, coming to know reality in order to transform it develops confidence and the capacity for effective action (Bradshaw, 1999). Those undertaking the new diploma and charged with making the new legislation work were left facing both ways—at the intersection of criminal and social justice—balancing notions of redress for disadvantage with budget management. The conflicting interests of the parties involved gave rise to four dilemmas in relation to curriculum content.
1.The paradoxical social objectives of strengthening the inclusion of care recipients in the community through a period of compulsory exclusion for the purposes of rehabilitation.
2.The risk that quick fix solutions prompted by time-limited, assessment procedures would prevail over the liberal concept of rehabilitation intended in the legislation.
3.The focus on the management of risk and dangerousness of care recipients rather than the development of their abilities for self-determination.
4.The belief that better management would provide a more effective solution for the range of economic and social problems experienced by care recipients.
The task was to set up an educational framework to encourage the development of critical consciousness to discover beliefs underpinning views of the nature of disability and the requirements of care recipients. We wanted students to interpret care and rehabilitation as something other than being “held in secure conditions, medicated without consent regardless of competency and subjected to restrictive leave and discharge provisions or recall at any suggestion of danger” (Dawson, 1994, cited in Brookbanks, 2003). We believed there should be an explicit focus in the curriculum on the importance of rehabilitation to enable care recipients to develop the range of skills needed to manage difficulties in their lives and to be assisted to achieve wellbeing and security.
The theoretical foundation of our work as tertiary educators was disability studies. Developed from the social model of disability (Oliver, 1990), this position not only challenges ableist superiority but also maintains a focus on the socially inclusive potential of environments and rights. Pinar (2009, p. 43) observes, “Curriculum development is the teachers’ opportunity to explore subjects informed by the academic knowledge and lived experience they and their students find compelling”. We hoped the intellectual quality and character of a curriculum grounded in disability studies with a counterhegemonic purpose might create opportunities for the students to consider two gaps: between their taken-for-granted understandings and the challenges from new experiences; and between the theoretical course content and its application in practice.
Pinar describes curriculum as a complicated and multiply referenced conversation that is a “subjectively structured expression of academic expertise, ethical judgement and intellectual passion” (2012, p. 223). Approaching the task of curriculum design we wondered whether people who were neither intellectually disabled nor subject to compulsory care could imagine realistic alternative futures for those whose lives were circumscribed by the limitations of both realities. Further was it possible for professionals with privileged identities as legally appointed officials administering a system of compulsory care to be anything but complicit in the maintenance of the status quo of care recipients? In our view, the curriculum should set up an educational framework that encouraged students to examine the beliefs underpinning their views of both the nature of disability and the effect of unequal power relations of compulsory care on care recipients. Finally it should encourage students to act as change agents, in their professional roles,
We decided to follow four main themes in the curriculum design, which are described in the sections below. For each theme we developed a theory-based paper dealing with the principles and ideas as discussed in current, relevant literature, and a clinical practice paper focusing on the practical application in the context of either care co-ordination or care management. At the beginning of each semester a study guide that included reflective exercises and a selection of readings for each of the papers was mailed out. Supervision for practice was provided by agreement in the workplace.
In the following sections, we describe how we went about identifying whether, and in what ways, the counterhegemonic and emancipatory potential of our particular curriculum was realised. The evaluation and discussion is framed around the four course themes for the programme.
Identifying changes in students’ understandings and practice
As success of any transformational process should be measured in specific improvements in the conditions of life of formerly rejected and marginalised groups, evidence of change or lack of it could indicate the success or failure of emancipatory intent (Heaney & Horton, 1990). Student comment used in this article to substantiate claims about any effects of their learning and experience came from two sources—course evaluations and interviews—and reflects the experience of a quarter of the graduates. Consent for the use of this data was sought following two separate applications to research ethics committees. The first asked the 17 students (six care co-ordinators and 11 care managers) enrolled in the first delivery of the diploma, for consent to use their anonymous feedback from evaluations completed at the end of each semester. The format for all evaluations consisted of four open-ended questions asking students for comment on the effect of their studies on themselves and their work as well as suggestions for changes to content. A second ethics application 2 years later sought access to 15 randomly selected graduates to invite their participation in telephone interviews. The semistructured interview schedule used with the four volunteers who responded (two co-ordinators and two care managers). It sought reflections on any effects the studies may have had on themselves and their practice a year or more after graduation. Both authors completed the thematic analysis of the evaluations and interview transcripts. Our interpretation of participants’ comments and conversation has shaped the selection of student voices in the following sections. We remain mindful of Pinar’s caution that “what students make of their study may not be known for months or even years and then only by the students themselves” (2012, p. 55).
Understanding disability and complex behaviour needs
Because the long-term problems of intellectually disabled offenders are principally associated with behavioural and learning difficulties, this theme examined the relationship between intellectual disability and the use of behaviour that contravenes accepted social rules. The content included updated definitions of intellectual disability, a revision of the ways disability can can be socially constructed, and the models of disability and their differing implications for service. In addition, the study guides focused on introducing or revising understandings of positive behaviour support in particular, techniques of applied behaviour analysis, the philosophical foundations of normalisation and the use of person-centred planning (Carr et al., 2002). This was in line with local best-practice guidelines (Brandford, 2000) and current literature on effective ways to provide support for persons with high and complex needs. Our intention in the related practice paper was to assist the students to review their understandings of the relationship between the care recipients’ use of challenging behaviour, including sexual offending, and the social, cultural, and personal circumstances that constituted their quality of life. Students were challenged to look critically at the application of these understandings in their assessment and planning practices.
Care managers needed to ensure care plans addressed problem behaviours, took account of care recipients’ learning disabilities, and were rehabilitative. Both care managers interviewed were clear that having an identified intellectual disability did not mean that people were unable to learn. As one remarked, study had helped to understand “that although clients may have difficulties in learning nevertheless they can learn. The challenge for me was to learn how the client might learn” (Interview). Challenges to fixed ideas about the socially constructed nature of intellectual disability also served to begin to disturb ideas of normalcy. As one student wrote, “I honestly had not thought of IQ as a ‘moveable feast’ that if a person was offered a care plan that enhanced skills development impacting on adaptive functioning, that a person might no longer be assessed as having an intellectual disability” (Evaluation).
An introduction to the functional analysis of behaviour had assisted understanding for some. Putting problematic or challenging behaviour into a context with a meaning greater than an idiosyncratic response of a disabled person had been the most significant part of the diploma for one care co-ordinator (Interview). While working out what a person’s problem behaviour meant and being able to communicate this to members of a multidisciplinary team had also been a helpful aspect of the content for one of the care managers (Interview). Both care managers interviewed claimed that these understandings had been strengthened by their attendance at further professional development about functional assessment (Interviews).
The regenerative vision of the legislation was that a period of compulsory care should be rehabilitative for the care recipient. To this end, behaviour plans and explicit instruction to teach new skills—features of positive behaviour support (Carr, 2007)—were highlighted as effective approaches for rehabilitation planning. Care co-ordinators needed to be able to review care plans making a judgement about their potential to support care recipients to learn socially and legally acceptable ways to achieve the intentions of their behaviour. One student commented that this theme had prompted, “looking at innovative ways when planning care and rehabilitation in a restrictive environment” (Evaluation). The interviewees were equivocal about the focus on the implementation of rehabilitation in practice. “The word rehabilitation, let it feature” (Interview) was one care manager’s view. However, care co-ordinators felt that the focus could get a bit lost in the processes set out in the legislation and there was a risk that the emphasis could be reduced to a lower case “r”. For one of them there was “a constant need to refocus on the fact that [rehabilitation] is so important and part of the process” (Interview).
Some students were also interested in the ideas of restorative justice introduced in this theme. It seemed a good way to redress the oppressive effects of the justice system for these offenders. One student remarked: “The allocation of [the principles of restorative justice] to situations that have already arisen, compounded by society’s attitudes towards offenders (double devaluation for people with disability) makes this model a challenging practice” (Evaluation). Interviewees detected a trend in services towards harsher responses than they thought necessary. In one case, a care manager had successfully argued that, rather than a GPS tracking bracelet, a mobile phone would be a much more successful and educative way to maintain contact with a care recipient making the transition to a less-restrictive care situation (Interview). Learning how to support a person and not be controlling was a challenge another of the care managers set for himself rather he wanted “to assist [care recipients] to obtain their needs. [I have] assisted clients to get the same stuff I take for granted” (Interview). The second care manager had reached a similar understanding. The diploma he said “made me a lot more aware perhaps of the influence that one person can have over the life of another” (Interview).
For six of the 17 respondents the effect of this theme had been to affirm or reinforce their current practice. Others acknowledged that the readings “gave a framework for philosophies” (Evaluation), or “updated current trains of thought” (Evaluation) while “affirming that values and practices are supported by theory” (Evaluation). Confidence was an important asset to develop in a climate of political and social risk that was reflected in the powers and duties of the respondents as set out in the legislation. The effect of critical theory was not evident in any reported changes to practice that involved recognition of the complicity of nondisabled people like themselves and their organisations in the marginalising experiences that had culminated in care recipients being directed into compulsory care.
The social context of care management and co-ordination
The second theme of the diploma encouraged investigation and analysis of the unique social context of Aotearoa New Zealand. Detail of this theme featured the implications of the Treaty of Waitangi for service provision for Mäori care recipients, something specifically envisaged in the legislation. In addition, the importance of relationships with families and friends within each person’s culture was emphasised in the construction of optimum conditions for rehabilitation. The practical application encouraged students to develop an awareness of the community resources and match them to their assessments of the individual capacities of care recipients.
Student evaluations of this strand of the diploma indicated that some had experienced a broadening of their understanding of culture. Providing service for Mäori care recipients in ways that supported Mäori self-determination was the focus of the provisions of the legislation. One Mäori organisation that already provided residential services for intellectually disabled people was selected as a provider of regional intellectual disability supported accommodation services. The experience of this group was that many offenders referred under the IDCCR Act, “were traumatised because of very difficult personal circumstances and family relationships were fractured” (Tenari, 2005, p. 130). The Mäori way was to discover and restore those connections, a process that became characteristic of the approach taken by this agency.
For a Päkehä care manager, the readings for this theme had emphasised and reinforced the importance of whänau. He felt that one of the differences he had been able to make in his practice stemmed from understanding the significance of reconnecting people with their families. “After learning about whänau and especially the cultural aspect, I reconnected [a young Mäori guy] with his family” (Interview). Similarly a Mäori care manager spoke of the way he was looking to implement treaty principles and treat non-Mäori care recipients with equal respect for their culture. “So with regard to developing a care plan for a [non-Mäori person] I was looking for equality and equity for that person without being too biased in my own views” (Interview).
Relationships were also an important feature of care managers’ work. For one interviewee, this involved informing families about the processes and helping them to appreciate that this is the way to go, otherwise things could be a lot worse for their family member. Networking contributed to the development of wrap-around services for care recipients that this care manager felt were at times suffocating. He said he found it hard “to come to terms with the amount of services put around a person. It appears you can never have too much” (Interview).
The realisation of the importance of relationships and networking had been a distinctive understanding about the role of care co-ordinator for one interviewee. “[The diploma] gave me the opportunity and acted as a stimulus for me to review how I practise and how I relate and make relationships. I went through some change where I used a lot more of my personal self with the people around me.” She recognised signs of personal change. She felt more authoritative, more powerful in a position of upper middle management, experiencing “a leap in responsibility” and status as a “high-level administrator” (Interview).
In their evaluations, some students indicated that they shared differing visions of social change. Others, using counterhegemonic pedagogy in Western academies, have noted the impact of students’ positioning in the dominant social group (Choules, 2007). The denial by white students of their advantages by expressing a pseudo-parity of feeling was evident in these student evaluations and has been noted in other studies (Hytten & Warren, 2003). Some chose to advocate for consideration of their own cultures. “While I already know that there is much more than one culture in New Zealand, the paper somehow gave legitimacy to me to actively pursue other cultural input, such as Irish or Scottish culture” (Evaluation). Another claimed to be more conscious of cultural requirements and planned to “raise the notion of culture of other more recent migrants to NZ” (Evaluation). Like ableism, the politics of whiteness also “works diligently to maintain the status quo and inform acts of resistance to critical thought” (McRae & Warren, 2012, p. 66).
The professional context of care management and co-ordination
This third theme of the diploma introduced students to the detail of the IDCCR Act and a closer study of their powers and duties. It also required students to think about ethical issues, the conflict between autonomy and paternalism and the impact of dual diagnosis (intellectual disability and mental illness). Finally, it addressed the important practices of risk assessment and management. The relevant areas of legislation and the accompanying court processes were introduced. The practical application involved visits to the Family Court and liaison with forensic and court personnel. It also covered the principles of assessment and care management and the characteristics of ethical service provision.
Student comment in evaluations indicated a greater awareness of the range of legislation that affected care recipients as a result of completing the coursework. For some, learning about the legislation had challenged them and the systems they worked in, to resist practices that could further isolate and marginalise those they served. The principles of curtailing the liberty of persons with diminished responsibility on the likelihood of harm to themselves or others had been the foundation for the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992, the model for the IDCCR Act (2003). The biggest difference in the view of one care co-ordinator interviewee was that other professionals besides the medical specialists contributed to the assessment and design of the care plan. In the experience of one care manager, mental-health professionals were more likely assume knowledge from the similarities, rather than the points of difference, between the two Acts. He had found he had something to contribute to their understanding of intellectual disability (Interview). For the second care co-ordinator interviewed, the benefit of the legislation was a “pretty good focus on ... the specific needs of the individual rather than some fairly generalised needs that are thought to apply to the whole group with high and complex needs” (Interview).
Student comment in evaluations asserted that coursework provided broader context for understanding offending “than the medical model espoused by fellow professionals”. One student claimed to be “more aware of the gaps in treatment programmes for people with intellectual disability who are sexual offenders” (Evaluation). Another student linked the reasons for offending to social causes, commenting that the diploma had assisted in looking beyond the specifics of the sexual offending to the social dynamics of the context and the history of disabled people and the impact of a lack of sexual education (Evaluation). When completing their care planning, practitioners who understand the causes and context of sexual offending by persons with intellectual disabilities may be more likely to promote the conditions that will lead to the happiness and wellbeing of those individuals (Yates, Prescott, & Ward, 2010).
In this and the following theme, affirmation was mentioned as an effect less frequently in evaluations. While one respondent was reassured—“It confirmed for me that my ideas and plans were on the right track and gave me new materials to work from” (Evaluation)—another acknowledged that gaining a “deeper philosophical basis to the nature of the job, reinforced current practice. It also increased my knowledge of Legislation, Acts and their intention and their practice in providing knowledge with a critical eye” (Evaluation).
Professional skills of care co-ordination and management
The fourth theme of the curriculum emphasised the skills that were needed to accomplish the tasks of co-ordination and management, including communication skills, report writing, and information gathering. The two papers familiarised students with the guidelines and regulations, as well as the interpersonal and professional skills they needed to complete the tasks outlined in the legislation.
Practice involved developing confident and assertive interaction in the professional context and the skills for using the appropriate registers in communicating with courts and care recipients. The experience of one participant during the year of study was that “advanced assertion skills are required at this level” (Evaluation). The complexities of working with and across agencies meant that participants “felt the need to analyse people’s roles, listen and observe carefully and at the same time facilitate meetings” (Evaluation). For another, the effect had been to enhance professional identity. New knowledge had been added to the existing stock as if in a storehouse.
I think my professionalism has been enhanced and my knowledge of legal aspects extended. I consider myself a well grounded ‘mature’ practitioner so I see the impact it has on my work has been more in how I view the systems of my work place and the need for changes—rather than my clinical role (Evaluation).
Some interviewees described how they were able to integrate earlier professional experience with their current roles. A care co-ordinator viewed the activities involved in care co-ordination as “right up social work’s alley” (Interview). She spoke of her growing confidence in being able to work like a detective putting all the pieces of the case together, enhancing her ability to see a whole picture. A care manager with experience in correction services found that his familiarity with making judgements using risk-assessment processes to underpin community-based service and support stood him in good stead. “I have a good understanding and sometimes this clashes with those who don’t have the same understanding” (Interview). In combination with the new learning this care manager felt more confident. “I speak from a knowledge base and this actually helps me get what the client needs. I know what I am talking about because I was trained properly” (Interview).
Conclusion
The professionalisation of an occupational group is a refinement of social location where valued forms of agency are allied with issues of power. The extent to which professionals will be able to make a difference will depend to a large part on whether they see themselves as a part of the solution or a part of the problem. While quick to recognise disability or difference in others, it is more difficult for a professional to turn the gaze inward and recognise features of hegemonic notions of ability (or gender or race) within the self or in a collective professional identity. While student feedback on the diploma programme indicated an increasing recognition from some students of their ableist advantage, for many others it seemed the diploma had not disturbed assumptions, but rather reaffirmed their professional capability in the new roles.
The conditions for explicit contradiction that undermine existing assumptions and beliefs are more likely to occur when learning is combined with experience. Knowledge that is of most worth helps learners to “understand what [they] experience” (Pinar, 2012, p. 210), integrating their lived experience with their studies. In other words, it is the application of critical inquiry linked to experience that enables decision making based on knowledge, thoughtful debate, and reason. If the design of curriculum is to achieve enlightenment it must assist students to advance their beliefs, challenge, defend, explain and assess evidence, and judge arguments.
Further implications for educators at every level follow from what Pinar (2012, p. 222) views as the “indispensible” contribution educational institutions can make to “understanding the legacy of past social injustice and injury”. When educators recognise the consequences of notions of normalcy—the marginalising of some, and the privileging of others—they also can identify the processes of stereotyping and categorisation that cede power to social definitions. Schools challenged to uphold the rights to education of young disabled New Zealanders face similar tensions and require a combination of effectual teacher education and multifaceted support to build communities where all students belong.
Entrenched discrimination rejects the reality that disability is part of human diversity. Changing such deeply held convictions is difficult to accomplish without some cognitive dissonance or discomfort. To do this effectively, educators need to provide opportunities for students to reflect, to challenge ideas, and to get to know disabled people well (McLean, 2008). It takes more than curriculum content that may be emancipatory to develop consciousness of the effects of hegemonic understandings. The task for educators at all levels is to find ways to support students through the discomfort of questioning entrenched social structures of privilege and disadvantage. The complicated conversation that is curriculum can link access to increasingly specialised forms of knowledge with questions of equity and justice and the socialisation of diverse groups of people. In this way classrooms, real or virtual, have the potential to become sites that challenge hegemonic understandings and practices.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this article.
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The authors
Margaret McLean, initially a primary school teacher and latterly a senior lecturer at the School of Critical Studies in Education at the Faculty of Education, is semi-retired and currently teaches needs assessors and service co-ordinators completing a Graduate Diploma in Education (Disability Support). Her research and writing interests include the impact of ableism in tertiary level education and curriculum design for professional development.
Email: ma.mclean@auckland.ac.nz
Frances Hartnett is a service advisor for Idea Services Northern Region. Formerly a lecturer in Disability Studies at the Auckland College of Education, Frances’ teaching and research interests include theories of disability including social role valorisation, evaluation of service quality, person-centred planning, active support and modernisation of vocational services. Frances is Chairperson of Citizen Advocacy Auckland Inc. and is on the Board of Arahura Trust, a mental-health service provider.
Email:fran.hartnett@idea.org.nz