Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2022

DOI

10.1080/09687599.2022.2116560

Publication Title

Disability & Society

Volume

Article in Press

Pages

1-19

Abstract

Disability simulations have developed as a popular professional development tool to help increase knowledge and awareness of disability and facilitate pedagogical learning among prospective and pre-service teachers. The aim of this research is to explore the ethics of sighted people simulating visual impairment from the perspective of visually impaired people. Participants were nine visually impaired adults who read vignettes narrating simulation experiences of prospective physical education teachers in a university setting before being interviewed about their perceptions of what they had read. Interviews were conducted via telephone, and were recorded, transcribed, and subjected to thematic analysis. The themes constructed and discussed in this article from an ethical perspective are: (1) involving visually impaired people in simulated experiences; (2) reinforcing negative attitudes about visually impaired people; (3) tensions involving touch for pedagogical purposes; and (4) adapting activities and grouping pupils in relation to ‘ability’.

Rights

© 2022 the Authors.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Original Publication Citation

Maher, A. J., Haegele, J. A., & Sparkes, A. C. (2022). Stop fearing blindness! Visually impaired people reflect on the ethics of sighted prospective teachers simulating visual impairment. Disability & Society. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2022.2116560

ORCID

0000-0002-8580-4782 (Haegele)

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