Southampton Education School The pedagogy of accessibility education

Southampton Education School The pedagogy of accessibility education Sarah Lewthwaite @slewth s. e. Lewthwaite@soton. ac. uk Centre for Research in Inclusion, 12 June, 2019

Pedagogy and accessibility Accessibility: • requires a unique mix of conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge and technical competence • has distinct pedagogic challenges • lacks pedagogic content knowledge • lacks pedagogical culture Pedagogic content knowledge is necessary to build and scale expertise effectively. 2

The pedagogy of accessibility education Developing Pedagogic Content Knowledge (Shulman, 1986). • Trainers and peer-educators may be strong in content knowledge, but lack pedagogic knowledge: a rich teaching repertoire that can be applied to accessibility. • Pedagogy may be implicit or unreflected: ‘invisible pedagogy’ (Bernstein, 1976) Accessing teachers’ expertise require dialogic, collaborative research methods to establish community knowledge and collective understandings. 3

The pedagogy of accessibility Characteristics of accessibility learning and teaching in the research literature (Lewthwaite and Sloan, 2016). • 23 papers, 3 introductions to thematic sessions, 2 posters, 1 Ph. D Thesis • Initial pedagogic themes include: – Using tools, standards – Active pedagogies focused on Problem/project based learning – Embedding in HCI – Approaches understood to facilitate empathy – Involving people with disabilities 4

The pedagogy of accessibility Key challenges: • Small and fragmented literature, lack of systematic debate, investigation and cross-citation • ‘Best practice’ discourses can proscribe limited pedagogic practices Developing pedagogical culture: • Build a community-level discussion • Connecting disciplines and sharing research beyond academy • Creating diverse research and teaching spaces • Additional cross-case research 5

Next steps: Teaching Accessibility in the Digital Skill Set • Deliver a new body of Pedagogic Content Knowledge for accessibility education, to support teacher development and enhance digital skills in the workforce. • Forge new collaborations and dialogue between academia and industry to develop pedagogical culture and teacher networks. • Deploy innovative ‘methods that teach’ to catalyse expert, teacher and learner participants through the research process. http: //Teaching. Accessibility. Soton. ac. uk

References Bernstein, B. (1975) Class and Pedagogies: Visible and Invisible. Educational Studies, 1: 1, 23 -41. Lewthwaite, S. and Sloan, D. (2016) Exploring pedagogical culture for accessibility education in computing sciences. Proceedings of the 13 th Web for All Conference. https: //dl. acm. org/citation. cfm? id=2899490 Nind, M. and Lewthwaite, S. (2018): Methods that teach: developing pedagogic research methods, developing pedagogy, International Journal of Research & Method in Education. https: //doi. org/10. 1080/1743727 X. 2018. 1427057 Shulman, L. (1986) Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher. 15, 4 -14. Wagner, C. , Garner, M. and Kawulick, B. (2011) The state of the art of teaching research methods in the social sciences: towards a pedagogical culture. Studies in Higher Education. 36 (1)L 75 -88. 7