Struggling toward abolition and dreaming beyond ableism in teacher education

Abolition is a verb, referencing how people build safe conditions while dismantling (and developing solutions beyond) harmful institutions, including educational institutions. Considering disability justice movement work in our roles as teacher educators, we explored how we might contend with the harmful purposes and functions of educational structure as we prepare future teachers to adopt abolitionist stances in their pedagogies. We begin with the premise that the current educational system, rooted in ableism, is fundamentally designed to rank, categorize and hypervalue/devalue children based on ability. Ableism intersects with multiple oppressions, fueling the inequitable distribution of resources in special/gifted education; and racist educational outcomes. To divest from ableism — decoupling learning from punishment in practice — we share three pedagogical examples from our own teaching, discussing how we support future teachers to imagine and enact teaching practices beyond providing services or accommodations, so that multiply-marginalized children and educators can be recognized as hole.