Cripping STEM Education: Five Principles for Disrupting Compulsory Sightedness
Preferred Citation
Shaheen, N. (2025). Cripping STEM education: Five principles for disrupting compulsory sightedness. Journal of Blindness Innovation & Research, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.5241/15-15
Abstract
Across the United States, K-12 schools have prioritized science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) coursework to prepare students for a STEM-focused economy. This paper contributes a blind pedagogical approach to STEM education that ensures blind and low-vision students are equitably prepared for that imagined STEM future. Drawing on crip theory, I show that the compulsory sightedness of K-12 STEM education is extraneous and exclusionary of blind and low-vision students. I argue that by following the five principles of blind STEM pedagogy educators can construct STEM classes that are born nonvisually accessible and equitable to blind and low-vision students. Finally, I invite educators to become epistemic activists and to conspire with the National Federation of the Blind to disrupt the compulsory sightedness of STEM education.
Keywords
STEM Education, K-12, accessibility, crip theory
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5241/15-15
The Journal of Blindness Innovation and Research is copyright (c) 2025 to the National Federation of the Blind.