Disability, Augmentative Communication, and the American Dream - by Ronald J Berger & Jon A Feucht & Jennifer Flad (Hardcover)

About the Book

In Disability, Augmentative Communication, and the American Dream the authors use a qualitative "mixed methods" study framed by analytical insights from disability studies to show how disability is not just an individual experience but a social phenomenon. The book focuses on ...

Book Synopsis

In Disability, Augmentative Communication, and the American Dream the authors use a qualitative "mixed methods" study framed by analytical insights from disability studies to show how disability is not just an individual experience but a social phenomenon. The book focuses on the life story of Jon Feucht, a man who was born with a form of cerebral palsy that left him impaired in his lower and upper body and unable to speak without the use of an assistive communication device. He eventually overcame all odds and achieved academic success, and is currently a doctoral candidate in education leadership and policy.

Review Quotes

Ronald J. Berger, Jon A. Feucht, and Jennifer Flad follow through on C. Wright Mills's promise of the sociological imagination. They make a significant contribution to the field of disability studies by illuminating the socio-historical context of Jon's everyday life as they articulate his experience with cerebral palsy.

This instructive book provides a fine-grained glimpse into the life of a man with cerebral palsy--his flaws and self-doubts, his real problems and real achievements. Grounded in a mixed qualitative methods study of one young man as an agent of change, the book is a concrete example of research that engages all three co-authors in a process inquiry, reflection, and learning. This book realizes its ambitious goal to help readers understand disability not just as an individual experience but also a social phenomenon in which we all participate.

This is a collaborative work by University of Wisconsin-Whitewater sociologists Berger and Flad with education professor Feucht, who as a man living with cerebral palsy recounts his experiences in schooling, his achievement of a master's degree in special education, and his development of a summer camp program for adolescents using augmentative communication devices. The first chapter reviews critical disability studies research in theory and method. It is very concise and perhaps one of the most comprehensible treatments of the contradictions and promises of that field and emancipatory-participatory methods. . . .[A]n important contribution to disability studies and exemplary in its collaborative methodology. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic levels/libraries.

About the Author

Ronald J. Berger is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and author of fifteen books, including Introducing Disability Studies and Hoop Dreams on Wheels: Disability and the Competitive Wheelchair Athlete.

Jon A. Feucht earned his master's degree in special education at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and is a doctoral student in educational leadership and policy at East Tennessee State University.

Jennifer Flad is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.