Collaboratively prosuming multimodal fairy tales of inclusion through disability studies in education: an exploratory study within a pre-service teacher education course

This paper reports on an exploratory qualitative study of pre-service teachers' perceptions of disability through their participation in a pedagogical practice, involving the collaborative “prosuming” of multimodal stories. In contemporary mediatised, multimodal cultures, pre-service teacher education in inclusive education needs to move beyond critical consumption of disability representations and engage teachers as prosumers, both consumers and producers of content, while acknowledging that disability perceptions are formed multimodally from an early age. Grounded in Disability Studies in Education, the study involved 43 pre-school and primary pre-service teachers who collaboratively prosumed multimodal stories and lesson plans focusing on inclusion, disabilities and educational needs. Data included e-portfolio reflections, Padlet reflections, group reflections and individual interviews. Findings, which emerged through reflexive thematic analysis, indicated that this practice could enhance pre-service teachers' knowledge about diverse disabilities and educational needs, their awareness of inclusive education and their critical engagement with disability representations. We argue that collaboratively prosuming multimodal stories can be perceived as a pedagogical avenue for supporting pre-service teachers' critical engagement with disability representations and strengthening inclusive education practices. Suggestions for future research include explicit collaboration between disabled and non-disabled people and further attention to creative writing processes within teacher education and inclusive pedagogy contexts.