To illustrate what I mean, I will talk you through my plans for next fall, when I will take over as lead instructor of the small basic writing program at Western Washington University. Instead, I am trying to imagine ways that we can design basic writing curriculum that put the skills and sensitivities of people with learning disabilities and psychosocial disabilities right at the center of day-to-day practice. (Incidentally, session A.01 on Thursday is focused on a the legacy of Dunn’s book twenty years after its publication.) You should also check out the excellent annotated bibliography maintained on, which includes a range of articles addressing specific impairments and particular issues in traditional writing instruction. There is plenty to say on this topic, and for those interested in it, I’d recommend especially Patricia Dunn’s book Learning Re-Abled: The Learning Disability Controversy in Composition Studies and Margaret Price’s Mad At School: Rhetorics of Metal Disability and Academic Life. I don’t want to focus today on the difficulties these students face in current-traditional basic writing instruction. Here I borrow Margaret Price’s term to indicate a wide range of disabilities that include psychiatric conditions, emotional impairments, and developmental conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorders and ADHD (Price 2013). In the last decade, we have also seen increased attention being paid to the growing population of students with a wide range of psychosocial disabilities. In large part, our concern with these students has grown apace with the rapid expansion in the student population itself, especially at two-year colleges. For at least three decades, Basic Writing instructors have recognized the need to better understand the unique needs of students with learning disabilities, including dyslexia and other language-processing differences. In this context, disability experience is seen as a source of insight, and disability identity is recognized as a vital cultural identity centered on values of radical acceptance of difference, mutual support, and collective action.įor the purposes of my presentation today, I am focusing on two types of disability with which I have personal experience-learning disabilities and psychosocial disabilities. When I say disability-studies approach, I am referring to a philosophy that moves beyond the idea that disability is a problem to be solved rather, disability studies honors and affirms disabled peoples’ unique perspectives and capacities. The central question I’m trying to explore here is how can a disability-studies approach motivate me to develop novel practices in my basic writing classrooms. I hope you will be able to give me feedback, and that my experiments will motivate you to try some of the techniques I will discuss today.

Taking to heart the fact that this is a workshop session, I have brought you today a true work in progress.

In this presentation, I will lay out a provisional plan I am developing for integrating disability studies principles into the daily practice of a small basic writing program at Western Washington University, a mid-sized state university in northwestern Washington State. This talk was presented at the Council of Basic Writing Pre-Conference Workshop, The Conference on College Composition and Communication, Houston, TX, 6 April 2016.

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