3.6 Analysis
3.6.2 Critical narrative analysis
The commitment to teacher stories in this project stems from the emphasis on lived experiences and embodiment within disability studies (Naraian, 2017; Siebers, 2008). However, without critique, there is an assumption that teacher perspectives and knowledge are “innocent positions” (Haraway, 1988). Operating at the borderlands of these perspectives required:
“simultaneously acknowledge that an individual's experience is shaped by macrosocial processes of which she or he is often unaware and that the same individual's experience is more than the living out of a socially determined script” (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007, p. 62). Drawing on critical narrative analysis, I achieved this in two ways. One by adopting a ‘questioning’ stance during the interviews. Two, through teacher workshops.
Critical narrative analysis (Souto-Manning, 2014a, 2014b) provides a framework to examine how teachers articulate inclusive pedagogies in their everyday practices and how
teachers negotiate competing institutional discourses around disability, difference, and inclusion.
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Critical narrative analysis (CNA) focuses on everyday stories within the context of institutional discourses. It combines elements from critical discourse analysis and narrative analysis to overcome methodological and theoretical challenges in the two approaches. Souto-Manning (2014a, 2014b) argues that CNA is a praxis-oriented analytical framework that supports the development of critical meta-awareness or critical consciousness. Thus, CNA provides a framework to focus on how teachers identify and understand the discourses that shape and construct teacher stories and practices.
Through a questioning stance during interviews, the teachers and I examined existing institutional, cultural, and social stories to identify and bring attention to sites of power. For instance, if teachers defined disability in opposition to normality, I questioned their stories about normality: “what is normal? How do you know what is normal?” I probed teachers about how policies or curricula were made or delivered to the classroom, why they feel like they ‘have to’
follow them, and why NGO interventions were designed in particular ways. This line of
questioning often brought up stories of resisting or reinterpreting policies and practices. Further, teachers were encouraged to question the stories and narratives I brought into the setting as well.
This was crucial to resist further colonization and oppression by imposing beliefs about what is critical and where power operates. Overall, the questioning stance invoked a critical examination of institutional discourses and teachers’ beliefs and practices. However, these questions often frustrated teachers as well – the questioning stance was a practice of mutual trust and critical awareness (Souto-Manning, 2014a, 2014b).
65 3.7 Positioning the self in the field
Insider/outsider relations evolved across contexts and relationships on the field (Ghaffar- Kucher, 2015). As a scholar-in-training in the global North, I had to be mindful of the ways in my suitcase full of theories from the Global North to the Global South (Sarkar et al., 2022) may colonize teacher narratives and inclusive pedagogies (Souto-Manning, 2014a) and heighten teachers’ orientation to ‘look North’ for knowledge and ‘best’ practices (Khoja-Moolji, 2017).
Conversations and disagreements around terminology and pedagogy were key aspects of building knowledge with teachers. Recognizing tensions between and across these identities involved engagement and sometimes awkward dialogue to examine how teachers negotiate language, discourse, power, and relationship in enacting inclusion (Sandoval, 2000). Thus,
My position as a married Hindu woman pursuing higher education in the United States, traveling independently, living alone in the city, and working outside India attracted a lot of questions – I was viewed as fortunate to be allowed to pursue this. Unmarried teachers or those about to be married bonded with me over questions about whether and how they will pursue their ambitions and manage married and work life and what kinds of “adjustments” they would have to make. Participants would explain how things are in “their culture” when describing the
limitations placed on Muslim women or would refer to the contradictions between religious texts and patriarchal realities. This allowed for conversations about patriarchy and limits placed on women’s agency and the role of schools in forging expectations of being a good Muslim girl (Khoja-Moolji, 2018).
In Mumbai, relationships were strengthened through social media like Instagram and Snapchat – teachers enjoyed dressing up, taking pictures, and I was invited to join them. There was a particular practice of femininity – being mindful of one’s appearance and physique,
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wearing colorful and flattering clothes and accessories. A lot of the initial relationship building in Mumbai was through compliments on clothes and appearance. In Ahmedabad, on the other hand, much of the connection and bonding occurred through sharing food.
Researching disability and inclusion as a disabled person was challenging across formats (Barton, 2005; Chaudhry, 2018). Over Zoom, my disability was not visible, and teachers
assumed that I am “normal” like them, making comments about how the disabled are not “like us”. When I arrived in Ahmedabad, my disability was not seen as pertinent, except to be offered the use of the elevator instead of the staircase.
I spent more time on location in Mumbai and had several episodes of severe hip pain. For instance, on the day of teacher recruitment, hip pain required me to use my cane to walk.
However, I wanted to maintain uniformity across field sites and did not want my disability to influence teachers’ desire to participate in a study explicitly about inclusive education.
Ultimately, I decided to walk with the cane to school and not carry it with me to the recruitment meeting. Pain and the use of the cane made the inaccessibility of the Mumbai school and the NGO office more salient. The school was in a narrow lane, within another narrow lane – cars could only drop me between 200-500 meters away from the school. Reaching the school itself required climbing three flights of stairs. The NGO office had three to four big stairs at its entrance and no ramp.
On days I walked with the cane in Ahmedabad, I was questioned whether I “really needed the cane.” When I experienced severe pain, teachers in Mumbai would observe me limping. In conversations, this was rarely addressed as disability – I continued to be categorized as able-bodied, like them, with some aches and pains. The negotiations around disability brought up questions about disability and language – how would the teachers refer to my disability
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without using the terms in Urdu, Hindi, Gujarati, or Marathi that in colloquial use are pejorative terms (Rao, 2001; Singal, 2010)? Recognizing pain was more polite. The use of English did not solve problems of terminology but highlighted new ones. For instance, during one of the sessions in Mumbai, which was designed for teachers and Hope Fellows, and school leaders to share their educational journeys (Annamma, 2016), I referred to myself as disabled and how disability identity offers both pain and a different perspective to the world (Siebers, 2008). The school leader rebuked that I should not use the word disabled, but “differently abled”. I pushed back in the conversation, and in private, she thanked me for teaching her something new. Overall, fieldwork involved continuous questioning (Ahmed, 2017) across identity categories of religion, caste, class, gender, and disability and their relationship with the enactment of inclusive
education.