(Re)learning to Teach Science with a Hearing Impairment: An Auto-ethnographic Study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite growing interest in inclusive education, there has been little attention to the inclusion of students with disabilities in teacher education. Research by educators with disabilities about teachers with disabilities can provide vital information that may help improve support services for teachers with disabilities. As a teacher educator who recently became single-sided deaf, and a preservice teacher who has had hearing loss since childhood, we contribute our voices to this gap in the literature. Through autoethnography, we draw on our lived experiences to identify critical incidents in our (re)learning to teach science, contextualizing these within the broader issue of inclusion in science teacher education. By identifying points of intersection and difference in our stories, we generated a list of salient themes related to arenas, levels, and degrees of inclusion. While our specific experiences may not be generalizable, they highlight broader themes that have implications for creating inclusive science teacher education programs.