'I want support, not comments': children's perspectives on supports in their lives

Supports are a major part of the daily lives of children with special educational needs who participate in general education schools. Little attention has been paid to how they experience supports. Six children and their peers who were interviewed appreciated supports because they remove restrictions in activities due to the impairment. However, the analysis also shows how these positive supports can have negative psycho-emotional repercussions, and that they are less focused on addressing disabling barriers. The children’s accounts demonstrate the ambiguous and situated nature of supports, and need for the children to be able to direct supports as ‘chief partners’ in the inclusion process

Dynamics of 5-methylcytosine and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine during pronuclear development in equine zygotes produced by ICSI

Background: Global epigenetic reprogramming is considered to be essential during embryo development to establish totipotency. In the classic model first described in the mouse, the genome-wide DNA demethylation is asymmetric between the paternal and the maternal genome. The paternal genome undergoes ten-eleven translocation (TET)-mediated active DNA demethylation, which is completed before the end of the first cell cycle. Since TET enzymes oxidize 5-methylcytosine to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, the latter is postulated to be an intermediate stage toward DNA demethylation. The maternal genome, on the other hand, is protected from active demethylation and undergoes replication-dependent DNA demethylation. However, several species do not show the asymmetric DNA demethylation process described in this classic model, since 5-methylcytosine and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine are present during the first cell cycle in both parental genomes. In this study, global changes in the levels of 5-methylcytosine and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine throughout pronuclear development in equine zygotes produced in vitro were assessed using immunofluorescent staining. Results: We were able to show that 5-methylcytosine and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine both were explicitly present throughout pronuclear development, with similar intensity levels in both parental genomes, in equine zygotes produced by ICSI. The localization patterns of 5-methylcytosine and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, however, were different, with 5-hydroxymethylcytosine homogeneously distributed in the DNA, while 5-methylcytosine tended to be clustered in certain regions. Fluorescence quantification showed increased 5-methylcytosine levels in the maternal genome from PN1 to PN2, while no differences were found in PN3 and PN4. No differences were observed in the paternal genome. Normalized levels of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine were preserved throughout all pronuclear stages in both parental genomes. Conclusions: In conclusion, the horse does not seem to follow the classic model of asymmetric demethylation as no evidence of global DNA demethylation of the paternal pronucleus during the first cell cycle was demonstrated. Instead, both parental genomes displayed sustained and similar levels of methylation and hydroxymethylation throughout pronuclear development

Crossing thresholds with a child with a disability

This essay takes up the concept of “thresholds” as it was developed in the Spring 2014 issue of Departures in Critical Qualitative Research. It opens up a fertile seam of thought about encounters with people labeled as “disabled” and with one's own child in particular. The article troubles the processes of normalization, and opens up the space of difference by excavating its unspeakability. The stories of two mothers and their disabled children are told using the concept of thresholds to examine their encounters with (the difference of) their children. The essay concludes with implications for professional practice.</jats:p

Desiring and critiquing humanity/ability/personhood : disrupting the ability/disability binary

The authors take up the challenge of Goodley and Runswick-Cole’s call to dismantle the ability/disability binary such that those now called ‘disabled’ can unproblematically join the ranks of those who will be counted as human. Using the methodology of collective biography, the six authors explore their own memories of becoming abled, and find in those memories a similar pattern of desire for, and critique of, humanness that Goodley and Runswick-Cole found in the participants in their own study, participants who were categorised as intellectually disabled. We turn to post philosophies to further develop the vocabularies through which the meaning of human can be expanded to include those who are currently viewed as less-than-human or other-to-human in their difference from the norm. Points of interest: - In this article the authors use the research method of ‘collective biography’ to explore their first memories of how they became able, and were recognized as normal and human. - We work with childhood photos to help open up our memories. - We challenge the taken-for-granted division between the categories normal/abnormal, able/disabled. - We argue that everybody is different, and that we all change and become able in different ways. - We are all vulnerable and we all desire to belong in the same world, irrespective of the categories we are placed in

Listening beyond words : swinging together

This paper draws on the making of a short video, called Swinging Together, produced in the context of an artistic participatory research project with people communicating beyond words. Our aim is to investigate how new materialist theories disrupt the production of ‘voice’ while working with a person labeled as ‘non-verbal’. We critique dominant functionalist and medical perspectives which reify ‘non-verbal’ only as a lack. In disrupting ‘voice’, we learn how important it is not to search for a magical closure, a final singular form, or (special) method with instructions to follow, but to focus on the relational and procedural. Concepts as ‘leading-following’ (Manning 2009) ‘voice without subject’ (Mazzei 2016) and ‘bodying’ (Manning 2016) shape our encounter with Heleen, an 18-year-old young woman commonly considered as autistic, non-verbal, strange, and out of place. In scrutinizing concrete practices which she desires we are searching to make sense of how Heleen experiences the world