Location
Saint Mary's University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus
Saint Mary’s University Center
2540 Park Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55404-4403
Schedule Overview
The conference will include a keynote speaker and an awards banquet on Thursday evening. Friday and Saturday will include plenary and breakout sessions as well as a town hall dialog for all conference participants.
Who should attend?
Now in its 17th year, the Disability Studies in Education Conference celebrates the intersectionality of disability studies with multiple areas of education and inclusion. This conference is for individuals who want to become better teachers, professionals, or activists for educating, engaging with, and advocating for people who have disabilities with a specific focus on early childhood through postsecondary educational settings. This conference facilitates dialog among people who have disabilities, professionals, students, parents, and others in order to share multiple perspectives around many topics relating to disability studies. Hearing directly from parents, advocates, and individuals who identify as having a disability will allow for a more inclusive and engaging educational environment that will meet the needs of students with disabilities and continue our society’s journey from a deficit (medical) model to one that celebrates all learners using a social model of understanding disability.
Why attend the conference?
The 2017 Disability Studies in Education Conference will look at disability studies from three intersecting perspectives: Inclusion, Universal Design for Learning, and American Indian education. Participants and presenters will explore this diverse set of questions:
• How can we acknowledge and ground ourselves through opportunities to promote inclusive educational practices? Who does inclusion benefit?
• What openings—and barriers—does a Universal Design for Learning approach offer education?
• How can understanding American Indian education support disability studies’ scholarship regarding schools?
• How can stirrings and wonderings across these three strands build powerful, creative educational approaches in a time when schools are becoming increasingly rigid in structure and overshadowed by racism? What do we need to know, do, and explore in order to change the field of education?
Conference keynote presentations and breakout sessions will align with one or more of the following strands:
Strand 1: Universal Design for Learning
What do Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approaches offer all students, from P12 through higher education? What are principle strategies and resources for creating systemic UDL opportunities for all students? How can UDL address political and ethical issues in an increasingly polarizing educational environment? How can we build socially just, morally courageous school systems, that reject current institutional biases and violences, from the ground up?
Strand 2: American Indian Education
What is the history of American Indian education and the scholarship that surrounds it? What are exemplars, and emerging educational practices, of American Indian education created by and for American Indians? How can a robust, emerging American Indian education movement oppose systemic oppression and colonialist ideologies?
Strand 3: Disability Studies in Education Research, Theory, and Scholarship
How and where can disability scholarship and research take on pointedly activist roles? What can new, post-empirical research methods offer Disability Studies in Education? What is the role of disability art in Disability Studies in Education? What does the future research of Disability Studies in Education look like, for example: queer, crip, and mad methodologies? What does it mean to bring a DisCrit (Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory) lens to education?
Call for Proposals
In addition to Disability Studies in Education researchers and scholars, artists, doctoral students, junior faculty members, early career faculty members, and others are encouraged to submit a proposal. If you are interested in perhaps being part of the dialogue, submit your proposal via the following:
Proposal Submission or email [email protected]
Proposal Submission Guidelines
• Proposal (500-700 words): summarizing the presentation and how it relates to conference strand(s) of Universal Design for Learning, American Indian Education and/or Disability Studies in Education Research, Theory, and Scholarship.
• Abstract (100 word max.): for inclusion in conference program.
• Additional Information: include title of presentation, list of presenter(s), institutional affiliations (if any), and contact information (email and phone number).
Deadline for proposal submissions is Feb. 15, 2017. All proposal submitters will receive notification by March 15, 2017. If you have questions regarding proposals, please contact [email protected].
Cost
One-day Only: $75 per person
Entire Conference (early-bird registration, if pre-registered and paid by April 1, 2017): $175 per person
Entire Conference (after April 1, 2017 and at-the-door registration): $200 per person
*Registration will open Feb. 1, 2017.
The Entire Conference registration fee includes event attendance, dinner Thursday evening, continental breakfast Friday and Saturday mornings, and lunch on Friday and Saturday. Travel and accommodations are to be arranged by each participant.
Accommodations
The following hotels are near the conference site and have accessible rooms:
Hilton Garden Inn, 0.9 miles away. 10 accessible rooms.
Holiday Inn Express, 1 mile away. 5 accessible rooms.
Hyatt Regency, 1.1 miles away. 20 accessible rooms.
Best Western Normandy Inn, 1.1 miles away. 5 accessible rooms.
Hyatt Place, 1.2 miles away. 21 accessible rooms.
DoubleTree Suites Downtown, 1.3 miles away. 12 accessible rooms.
Sheraton, .5 miles away. 6 accessible rooms.
Vendor Information
If you are interested in participating in the Disability Studies in Education Conference as a vendor please contact [email protected].
This event is made possible in part through a Hendrickson Ethical Leadership Grant provided by Saint Mary’s Hendrickson Institute for Ethical Leadership.