Mad Studies, (Critical) Disability Studies, Inclusive Education and Higher Education Participation – Critiquing Fitness to Teach

This article focuses on a critique of the UK’s policy directive related to Fitness to Teach, particularly in relation to the experiences of disabled people attending teacher education. It raises a different set of questions in relation to teacher education and higher education participation. It recognises that there are tensions in using various terminological descriptors that shape and reshape discourses of power/knowledge. Given the increasing number of students being and becoming identified as having mental health difficulties (an official term in the higher education lexicon of name-calling) the university is coming under increasing scrutiny. Policy directives such as ‘Fit to Study’, and ‘Fitness to Teach’ pose specific barriers and challenges. Alternatively, the disciplinary fields of Mad Studies, (Critical) Disability Studies, and Inclusive Education, offer different insights and questions about how institutions can disrupt traditional ableist/disablist structures of normalcy and systems of discrimination. Rather than typical ‘curative’ policy directives related to ‘self-help’, ‘self-improvement’, ‘self-confidence’, ‘self-efficacy’ and notions of ‘well-being’, this article argues that such discovery/recovery policies are inherently discriminatory and deficient. This article draws upon the findings from a previous postgraduate research study which explored the experiences of Post Graduate Certificate of Education trainee students in terms of their interactions with different staff whilst on school placements. Sarah, the author of this earlier small-scale postgraduate research study, specifically utilised the use of questionnaires and interviews with university tutors, school teachers and students situated within the Southwest of England. Given this, and alongside drawing upon this alternative disciplinary field, we add further theoretical understandings and further details of Sarah’s personal narrative and of her own previous teacher training experience which are situated alongside emerging concerns with ableist/disablist policy directives. Within this context, we examine these interactions in context of the so-called ‘Fitness to Teach’ policy, a current disciplinary requirement under legislative duties.1