Conference Agenda

This paper reports on a study that examines the knowledge, attitudes and skills of art education teachers and students studying fine arts in relation to disability issues and the extent to which they employ disability art in teaching. The study was conducted in the Republic of Cyprus (hereafter Cyprus) and falls within the theoretical framework of Inclusive Education, and draws ideas from Disability Studies, Disability Studies in Visual Art, and the Disability Arts Movement.

Scholars in Inclusive Education have long argued that for inclusive education to be achieved, it needs to be understood as the provision of quality education, participation and collaboration between students, teachers and the staff involved (Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011). Although inclusive education respects all children’s right in education, this paper focuses on the idea that disability art can be a means to promote the inclusion of children with disabilities, since it can contribute to the removal of attitudinal barriers and stereotypes about disability. For this to be achieved, the national curriculum needs to consider disability art and require that it is part of teaching throughout compulsory schooling. However, according to the literature, national curricula across countries rarely include the work of people with disability in the curriculum (Erevelles, 2005; Symeonidou, 2018). Thus, art education teachers may not be aware of such work. They may also be ignorant of the literature developed in Disability Studies, pointing out that people with disabilities are traditionally seen as having a problem (medical model of disability), but in reality, it’s the society that marginalizes and excludes them with the attitudinal and other barriers it poses to their participation (social model of disability) (Barnes, Oliver & Barton, 2014; Goodley, 2017, 2019).

Cypriot society often operates based on stereotypes in disability issues and ignores the personal identities and experiences of people with disabilities, which are also expressed through arts. Disability Studies and Art are now two scientific disciplines that can be combined and develop positive approaches of disability in the Greek-Cypriot society that still poses stereotypical barriers. Disability Studies, as well as Disability Studies and Art Education, promote social and cultural attitudes of positive disability identity, and question the existing disability stereotypes.

Art Education has longstanding ties to disability research and pedagogy, and recent advancements in Art Education as well as Disability Studies closely align the two fields (Roultstone, Thomas & Watson, 2012). Disability Studies and Art Education, focus on understanding disability in different domains such as society, politics, culture, history and especially personal experience (Connor, Gabel, Gallagher & Morton, 2008). They emphasize the priorities and views of people with disabilities and promote social justice and equality. In addition, Disability Studies and Art Education reject the medical model of disability by understanding disability as a social construction and focus on inclusion in every aspect and especially in education (Connor, Gabel, Gallagher & Morton, 2008). However, Art Education provides a safe environment in which students with and without disabilities can discuss and think about social issues and think of how they can promote inclusive culture and positive identity (Vasey, 1992).

Within this theoretical framework, the issue of including the history and work of people with disabilities in the curriculum becomes central (Erevelles, 2005; Symeonidou, 2018). Research in different countries, including Cyprus, indicates that the national curriculum ignores people with disabilities (Symeonidou and Mavrou, 2020), and the subject of Art Education is no exception. Within this context, the research question of the study was: To what extent can art education teachers and students studying fine arts can understand disability as a complex state of being and as a social construct through disability art?

It is widely recognized that multiple factors are involved in the production of student disadvantage, and that the difficulties which many children face at school are complex, multilayered and intersectional (Thomas & Loxley, 2022). Nonetheless, the current development with more children deemed eligible for special education and psychiatric services also raise questions about the way students with special needs are understood and described. In this presentation, I will focus on educational psychologists (EPs), who play an important role in assessing student eligibility for special education. Currently, EPs spend a considerable amount of time writing psychoeducational reports or what is also often referred to as statutory educational psychology reports (Buck, 2015).
In most countries, EPs have tried to shift from an individualized focus on children with problems to a focus on how systemic and relational understandings of children are expected to improve educational psychological services for children, professionals, and parents (Szulevicz & Tanggaard, 2017; Moen et al., 2018; Kolnes et al., 2021). The main reason behind this shift is that EPs are supposed to help facilitate inclusive learning environments as special education needs expenditures represent an ever-increasing part of school budgeting. It currently seems, however, that the need for educational psychological services has grown substantially over the last years. The consequence of the enhanced need for educational psychological services is that EPs end up spending more time making individual student assessments and writing psychoeducational reports in place of engaging in preventative work and pedagogical counselling (Burns et al., 2020)
Interestingly, the time spent, and the efforts made by EPs in writing the psychoeducational reports do not seem to measure up with the expectations of teachers and parents. Teachers often report low satisfaction with psychoeducational reports, as they are difficult to translate into everyday practice for teachers, and because the readability of the reports often is relatively bad (Burns et al., 2020).
Different studies have investigated teachers’ understandings, preferences and comprehension of psychoeducational reports (Umaña et al., 2019), and although Brenner (2003) and Dobrowski (2020) argue that the recommendation section in a psychoeducational report is the most important section of the whole report, as it offers parents, teachers and others advice and a way forward in relation to the child/student, surprisingly little research has been devoted to the specific recommendations made by EPs in psychoeducational reports (Burns et al., 2020).
This presentation is based on an empirical study in which 111 psychoeducational reports from two different Danish authorities were analyzed. The following questions guided the study: (a) what kinds of recommendations are made in the reports? and (b) what do the recommendations in the psychoeducational reports tell us about EPs’ work, assessment methods and understandings of children. The results are used to discuss what the recommendations in the psychoeducational reports tell us about (a) the status of educational psychology practice and (b) the schools and learning environments that children are part of.
Across the 111 reports and regardless of the length of the recommendation sections, a consistent pattern was identified: the need for clear structure in the learning environment was part of the recommendation section in 107 (98, 2%) of the 109 reports with a recommendation section. Whilst there were slight variations in the specific formulations of the recommendation across the reports, the need for providing structure on a consistent basis was, in other words, a standard recommendation in the reports.
In the presentation, I will analyze what this standardized and maybe even stereotypical recommendation can tell us about 1) EP’s counselling routines, 2) the understanding of children with special needs and 3) the school system.