Patty Douglas

Patty Douglas is an Associate Professor of Disability Studies in Education in the Faculty of Education at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada. Her work in disability studies concentrates on critical and creative approaches to autism and care as supported by feminist, queer, decolonial, critical post-humanist, cultural studies and other critical approaches that dislodge the (humanist) human in educational research and practice. Douglas leads the Re•Storying Autism in Education project, a SSHRC funded international, multimedia storytelling project that challenges deficit stereotypes of difference to transform policy and practice. She is a former special education teacher and the mother of two sons, one of whom attracted the label of autism. Patty identifies as neurodivergent and invisibly disabled. More information can be found at: www.restoryingautism.com. @ReStorying

Photo of 6 people working on making digital stories at a workshop. The people are sitting or standing and all look to be concentrating on their work.

Enacting Autism Inclusion

Funded by Principal investigator the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)

Principal Investigator: Patty Douglas; Co-investigator Carla Rice

Enacting Critical Disability Communities in Education is a multimedia storytelling project that links autistic people, family members, researchers, educators and artists in a unique international partnership that brings together stakeholder groups in education. The aim of the partnership is to collaboratively rethink inclusion theoretically and practically in ways that desire the difference of autism and move beyond remediation or intervention as the ‘solution’ to the problem of autism. An archive of 17 first-person films was created through two multimedia storytelling workshops in Toronto, along with a short documentary about the project. The project will share insights gleaned from these outputs, alongside interviews and surveys with educational leaders to foster a change in both consciousness and practice around educational inclusion.

To find out more about the project, please visit the Enabling Autism Inclusion website:
http://enactingautisminclusion.ca/