Featured Articles
We will regularly feature new articles related to Facilitated Communication, disability studies and inclusion. For selected bibliography and FCDigest archives please click on the left side links. Check back often for the latest in cutting-edge research on communication, articles that forge new territory in our understanding of disability and inclusion, and the work and words of FC users. Where possible, full text versions of these articles are provided. For others, you will find the citation information necessary to locate the text in your local library or online source.
Tuzzi, A. (2009). Grammar and lexicon in individuals with autism: a quantitative analysis of a large Italian corpus. Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 47, 373-385.
“Statistical and linguistic procedures were implemented to analyze a large corpus of texts written by 37 individuals with autism and 92 facilitators (without disabilities), producing written conversations by means of PCs. Such texts were compared and contrasted to identify the specific traits of the lexis of the group of individuals with autism and assess to what extent it differed from the lexis of the facilitators.
…
The results support the existence of lexis and distributional patterns of grammatical categories that are characteristic of the written production of individuals with autism and that are different from those of facilitators.” (p. 373)
Rossetti, Z., Ashby, C., Arndt, K., Chadwick, M., & Kasahara, M. (2008). “I like others to not try to fix me”: Agency, independence, and autism. Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 46, 364-375.
This article is about interpreting the actions or performances of individuals labeled with autism who type to communicate. More specifically, the authors discuss viewing competence amid behaviors and actions traditionally linked with incompetence. Researchers engaged in participant observation and conducted open-ended interviews with 9 participants who were working to develop independent typing skills. Three findings emerged from this research. First, participants shaped a notion of independence that included dependence on various supports. Second, researchers recognized the concept of agency in the interactions between participants and their communication facilitators. Third, participants exercised control of their lives through these expressions of agency.
Wallis, Claudia (2006). "Helping" autistic people speak. Time Magazine, May
"I met Jamie Burke and Chandima Rajapatirana earlier this year at a Syracuse University training session for people interested in learning facilitated communication. FC is a highly controversial technique for helping people with limited or no speech learn to communicate, generally using a keyboard and the help of a human facilitator for both physical and emotional support. It originated in Australia in the late 1970s and was first used for children with cerebral palsy, among other disorders. Both Burke and Rajapatirana had their moms serving as facilitators in our interviews. When Jamie types one-handed, Sheree Burke holds the keyboard. When he types with two hands on a table, she stands behind him touching the back of his shoulders. Rajapatirana also has his mom lightly touching his shoulders or waist as he types. But many others who rely on FC require a lot more hand-holding. Some are physically supported by their facilitator at the forearm or shoulder; some are held at the wrist." Click here for a link to the article.
Munoz, K. (2007). Unspoken identity: A controversial method grants expression to those without a voice. Jerk Magazine, March.
"It's Wednesday afternoon and Syracuse University students Hesham Khater and John Selby sit across from one another at a table in the Schine Underground. Ever since the two met a year ago in an anthropology class, they meet weekly at their usual spot to catch up.
During their conversation, noise from outside the room breaks Khater's conversation. He stands up and paces around a bit while Selby continues speaking, turning in his seat to face Khater, unfazed by this sudden movement. Khater then returns to the table and sits. He continues to fidget for several moments. A gentle hold from his facilitator, Michele Paetow, helps settle him down." Click here for the full text of the article.
Kliewer, C. & Biklen, D. (2007) Enacting literacy: Local understanding, significant disability, & a new frame for educational opportunity. Teachers College Record, 109 (2), 2579-2600.
Culturally authoritative texts such as Text Revision of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual-IV [DSM-IV-TR](American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2004) describe literate impossibility for individuals with disability labels associated with severe developmental disabilities. Our qualitative research challenges the assumptions of perpetual subliteracy authoritatively embedded within the DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2004). U. S. education policy also confronts, at least rhetorically, assumed hopelessness with reading and writing remediation in schools. In this analysis and synthesis of our recent qualitative and ethnographic studies, we specifically describe the dimensions of local understanding that foster citizenship in the literate community for individuals commonly acted upon as hopelessly aliterate, subliterate, or illiterate due to assumptions surrounding their degree of disability. We contrast these descriptions of local understanding with U.S. education policy that mandates what we believe to be a singular, narrow, and rigid approach to early or initial written language instruction.
Kliewer, C., Biklen, D., & Kasa-Hendrickson, C. (2006). Who may be literate? Disability and resistance to the cultural denial of competence. American Educational Research Journal, 43(2), 163-192.
"Through a critical interpretivist frame, the authors use ethnography and archives to examine themes associated with society's ongoing denial of literate citizenship for people with perceived intellectual disabilities. They link this denial to the experiences of other devalued and marginalized groups to challenge the common perception that citizenship is an organic impossibility for people defined as intellectually disabled. The authors present four themes of literate disconnection, and in the conclusion, ponder the moral shift necessary to craft a science of literacy for all."
Biklen, D. & Burke, J. (2006). Presuming competence. Equity and Excellence in Education, 39, 166-175.
"At least since the early 1990s, educators in inclusive schooling as well as scholars in Disability Studies have critiqued prevailing notions of intellectual abilty and have suggested the importance of interpretive communities for constructing students competence (Biklen, 1990; Goode, 1992;, 1994; Kliewer, 1998; Kluth, 2003; Linneman, 2001). This work follows in the tradition of education-as-dialogue, which some have argued is a sine qua non for conceptualizing education with individuals who have been traditionally marginalized (see for example, Ashton-Warner, 1963; Freire, 1970). The core of this article is a conversation between a university educator and a high school student with autism who types to communicate. Out of this essay, the authors find a series of principles for inclusive schooling, the most central of which is the idea of presuming competence of students."