I wash my face with dirty water - Narratives of disability and pedagogy

Reflective practice and the value of reflexivity between personal experience and pedagogy are common research themes today. However, teacher candidates often report a lack of encouragement to be reflective of their experiences with disability and the ways those experiences can inform pedagogy. This article results from a year of inquiry involving 3 novice teachers with disabilities. The impact of their experiences is discussed in light of their developing pedagogical knowledge. The article concludes that for them, teaching is an encounter with the self but that their encounters are an untapped resource with rich potential for the construction of pedagogical knowledge. The article argues that teacher educators must facilitate reflection on experiences with disability as with gender, race/ethnicity, and other identity markers or lived experiences. The article includes examples of the author's attempts to make use of disability experiences in the teacher education curriculum.