Conference Agenda

In 2009, Germany signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and thus committed to implement and to ensure (among others) an inclusive education system as well as an inclusive labour market. Whereas the vocational training sector, adult education and the labour market still fail to meet the criteria for inclusivity (Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales 2021, p. 197). Contrary, Germany belongs to the countries with a “traditionally highly segregated education system” (Schreiber-Barsch & Rule 2021, p. 252) in which people are divided into “normal” and “special” learning institutions. Who is assigned to which institution depends on the binary attributions “able” or “not-able”. The same applies to the labour market (Kranert et al. 2021). Beyond Germany, there is a persistent gap between employment rates of the so-called non-disabled and disabled people in all European and OECD countries (Sainsbury 2018, p. 135).

In adult education, especially persons with cognitive disabilities are usually not considered at all, because they are attributed, among other things, with having no interest in education or not being able to learn (Pongratz 2022). As ableism is considered a powerful mechanism of exclusion, individuals at the intersection of racism and ableism face potentially magnifying effects of exclusion, especially under capitalist conditions (Aferworki Abay 2022, p. 103).

The paper explores possibilities for inclusion and participatory language education in the context of German adult education classes. Addressees of the programme are employees of sheltered workshops in Bremen, Germany. The project is one of the first attempts to offer adult education at the intersection of second language acquisition and disability. The target group in question consists of highly heterogeneous groups of learners, especially regarding language proficiency, first language(s) and disability, but also in terms of other categories such as age or gender. At the same time, the learners are part of the segregated labour market specifically reserved for disabled people, bearing characteristics of total institutions, as Karim (2021) argues. While the German classes are accessible only to employees of the institutions, and thereby subject to exclusive conditions (Kranert et al. 2021), the aim of the programme is nonetheless to foster inclusion and promote participants’ communicative agency in the workplace and beyond. In this context, approaches of „inclusive exclusion“ i.e. exclusive environments leading to a higher level of inclusion in the future (Kollender 2020), seem worthy of consideration.

With these perspectives in mind, the paper is looking into how and to what extent, inclusive and participative approaches can be implemented in adult education at the intersection of ableism and racism within todays excluding and segregating social structures. Thus, we are focusing on the professionalization for inclusive adult education by following an intersectional approach on inclusion, critical on power-relations and on (re-)producing differences (e.g. More & Ratković 2022). In order to implement the values of inclusivity which we argue for, the study follows a qualitative research design with participatory components, empowering all research participants and lending a voice to their perspectives. We conclude by discussing “Critical Diversity Literacy” (Steyn 2015) as a meta-competence in order to reduce excluding attitudinal barriers.

The results of this study are highly relevant beyond the specific German context, as they provide valuable insights into possibilities of creating a participative and inclusive learning environment for learners positioned at the intersection of racism and ableism.

In this paper, the relevance of biographical reflections in educational transitions of people with disabilities and their families is presented. Discussing and reflecting on biographical experiences, especially around the context of education, is considered significant by people with disabilities and their families because of mostly predefined life trajectories (Felbermayr, Fasching, Hubmayer, 2019; Love, Zagona, Kurth, Miller, 2017; Singh, 2019; Weiler, Keyzers, Scafe, Anderson, Cavell, 2020). Experiences of exclusion and discrimination, lack of choice, special education, lack of preparation for employment, missing participation in decision-making and standardised transitions are not uncommon in educational pathways of people with disabilities (Fasching, Felbermayr, 2022). Narratives, due to such experiences, emerge under more difficult conditions and are often not recognised as such, which is why they are less often considered in research studies. However, it is precisely these experiences, as they were also collected from parents int the FWF project “Cooperation for Inclusion in Educational Transitions”, that are insightful and represent broadening perspectives of dominant social conditions.

The presented outline of the problem leads to the question of individual experience and subjective description of biographical experiences in the context of disability. Which biographical experiences do parents of children with disability address in Reflecting Teams? The reflections in this article refer to parents’ experiences of disability in relation to their adolescent children in the educational transitions after compulsory schooling, which invites retrospection and reflection on their self-experienced transition and thus establishes a generational perspective on educational transitions in the context of disability (Siegert, 2021).