The language that educators use when referring to and addressing students with disabilities is incredibly impactful. Whether negative or positive, language creates a unique environment that can affect the self-esteem of students with disabilities, and provides a model for typically developing students on how to interact with their peers with disabilities (West, Perner, Laz, Murdick, & Gartin, 2015). However, many teacher preparation programmes do not adequately address the use and impact of educators’ language with regards to disability.

The most commonly accepted discourse for referring to and addressing people with disabilities is person-first language, wherein the individual is addressed prior to the disability (for example, ‘person with autism’) (Dunn & Andrews, 2015). However, some disability studies advocates have challenged the notion of exclusively using person-first language, in favour of promoting the use of identity-first language (for example, ‘Deaf-person’), as identity-first or disability-first language may allow one to show pride in their disability (Dunn & Andrews, 2015). Although there is consensus on the importance for educators to understand the impact of language used to address and refer to people with disabilities, teaching both identity-first and person-first language concepts to future educators has not been well documented.

‘Many teacher preparation programmes do not adequately address the use and impact of educators’ language with regards to disability.’

A specific method that may be utilised to teach future educators about language and disability may be educational podcasts. One type of podcast that has well-established positive effects on learning is content acquisition podcasts (CAPs). CAPs are podcasts that distribute audio paired with still images, (Kennedy et al., 2016). Furthermore, CAPs are able to blend the desirable features of podcasts (such as increased accessibility) with validated instructional design principles (for instance, pairing words with still images) and content developed by experts.

In our article, ‘Content acquisition podcasts’ impact on pre-service teachers’ understanding of language and disability’, a CAP was developed that focused on educators’ use of language to address and refer to people with disabilities (McNamara, Wilson, & Petersen, 2020). The purposes of this investigation were to determine how a CAP impacts undergraduate students’ understanding of language with regards to people with disabilities, and to examine undergraduate students’ perceptions towards CAPs as a learning tool. Focus group interviews, a perceptions survey, and a pre- and post-test that allowed students to choose between appropriate and inappropriate terminology with regards to people with disabilities were used to assess the impact of the CAP. Qualitative analyses, a pairwise t-test, and a Pearson’s correlation analysis were used to determine the CAP’s impact on 43 pre-service educators. Results revealed that the CAP significantly increased the participants’ knowledge from pre- to post-test. In addition, the participants generally had positive perceptions towards the CAP. The focus groups indicated a number of themes in relation to both language use regarding people with disabilities (for example, empathy towards people with disabilities, confusion on how to properly use person-first language) and CAPs.

‘CAPs are able to blend the desirable features of podcasts (such as increased accessibility) with validated instructional design principles (for instance, pairing words with still images) and content developed by experts.’

Although previous research has shown CAPs to be an effective tool to learn content, this investigation suggests that CAPs can be used to teach ambiguous and complex information, such as language usage and disability. In addition, this tool could be impactful in order to teach pre-service teachers how to properly refer to and talk to people with disabilities, which could lead to more meaningful relationships with these students, and less opportunities to offend and lower the self-esteem of students with disabilities. Furthermore, by explicitly teaching about the impact of language, it is likely that pre-service teachers will be more likely to challenge the oppressive and dominant discourses that have long-marginalised people with disabilities.

This blog is based on the article ‘Content acquisition podcasts’ impact on pre-service teachers’ understanding of language and disability’ by Scott McNamara, Kyle Wilson and Amy Petersen, published in the British Journal of Educational Technology. It is free-to-view for a limited period, courtesy of our publisher, Wiley.

References

Dunn, D. S., & Andrews, E. E. (2015). Person-first and identity-first language: Developing psychologists’ cultural competence using disability language. American Psychologist, 70(3), 255.

Kennedy, M. J., Wagner, D., Stegall, J., Lembke, E., Miciak, J., Alves, K. D., & Hirsch, S. E. (2016). Using content acquisition podcasts to improve teacher candidate knowledge of curriculum-based measurement. Exceptional Children, 82(3), 303–320.

McNamara, S., Wilson, K., & Petersen, A. (2020). Content acquisition podcasts’ impact on pre-service teachers’ understanding of language and disability. Advance online publication. British Journal of Educational Technology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12927

West, E. A., Perner, D. E., Laz, L., Murdick, N. L., & Gartin, B. C. (2015). People-first and competence-oriented language. International Journal of Whole Schooling, 11(2), 16–28.