The purpose of this critical arts-based autoethnography has been to examine my process in internalizing, perpetuating, and deconstructing normativity across a six-year time span of teacher education. I analyzed 70 educational artifacts using Reflexive Thematic Analysis alongside crocheted squares. This chapter frames the discussion as an ongoing inquiry, as the process never ends. This is also why I frame the question in the present, because of the never-ending nature of this process. 

I was horrified by the degree of racism and protection of meritocracy in the data set. To make it worse, these comments and beliefs were validated and reinforced by professors and grading systems. At the same time, I bring acceptance to my learning process because my ignorance is by design. I am one of many teachers who experience and contend with the brainwashing of normativity. Ewing (2025)’s "Race Machine" reveals itself; my complicities are what keep this machine going. I do not act in isolation. The theme “White, Nondisabled Protection” was particularly prominent in my early undergraduate work, where sources and coursework omitted marginalized perspectives in favor of white, nondisabled perspectives, even when discussing the histories of marginalization. In the case of Disability Rights, this was omitted entirely. Deficit framings of racialized communities (e.g. lacking culture, history, resistance, agency) were rewarded, and my tokenistic visions of a melting pot society were deemed progressive.

Ladson- Billings & Tate (1995)’s argument against the multiculturalism paradigm was an extremely relevant critique of my undergraduate coursework. I frequently focused on individual identity representation and multicultural celebration in a tokenizing manner. This symbolic inclusion allowed me to ignore systematic intersectional exclusion and to seemingly “solve” the “issue” of diversity. I danced around issues of racism and “solved” racism through multicultural representation. This is consistent with Perouse-Harvey (2022)’s challenges of relying on stereotypes and viewing racism as irrelevant to education. I found more clarity when I later engaged with anti-oppressive frameworks and wrote about racism with intention, explored in theme “Naming Oppression Directly”. I began to recognize that avoidance of oppressive structures is an act of violence and complicity. 

Crucially, the theme “Compliance as Baseline” was another function of the Race Machine. I would bash conformity and simultaneously maintain its power. I treated relationships as transactional, saying things like playing a game can “trick” kids into “obeying”, “if your students know you care, they are more likely to cooperate”, that ASL is a “powerful tool when establishing and maintaining classroom discipline”. I justified the arts in education as something that can lead to higher IQ scores. I co-opted progressive practices linked to culture, well-being, and relationships for the sake of compliance. Similar to what Cruz et al. (2024) call “contingent inclusion”, where inclusion is contingent on compliance, I enacted this transactional view of belonging. I also directly justify contingent inclusion, where I uncritically accept zero-tolerance behavioral policies.

Essentialism was rampant throughout the data, which I call “Recipe for Reduction” as a theme. I frequently reduced complex ideas and identities to categories and binaries presented “solutions” to teaching as one-size-fits all. For example, the pervasiveness of pigeonholing students into specific learning styles or developmental stages, anti-social behavior versus pro-social behavior, and authoritarian versus authoritative teaching. Roberts (2024) highlights this right/wrong binary mentality, explaining that colonialism operates within an “or” mindset that provides clear-cut definitions of right or wrong, while Indigenous worldviews often operate within an “and” mindset that leaves room for possibility. I find that my later coursework in graduate school embraces this ambiguity, as highlighted in the theme “Interdependence” that relinquishes control to make space for the expansiveness of the natural world. 

Dunham & Alexander (2022) and Boveda and Aronson (2019) noticed their participants would reflect on their own identities, but did not extend or connect these reflections to intersectional understandings or groups outside of their own marginalization. I am still processing the ways in which I do this, the ways I search for myself. For example, originally, I had anticipated more reflections about my neuroqueer/marginalized identities, but in many ways de-centering myself allowed me to see that I had been prioritizing my own comfort and my own experiences all along, without realizing it. I critique this in the theme “Teacher as Savior”, where I note how my insecurities and traumas of my educational experiences bled into my teaching practice and savior complex. Even now, I thought that this study would enlighten some parts of my identity that I have suppressed, give me clarity as to who I am, and reclaim parts of myself. Instead, I am still learning to accept and critique my processes without the self-actualizing potential of healing myself through this study.

My primary takeaway was that paradigm shifts are not linear nor instantaneous, which is consistent with Perouse-Harvey (2022)’s findings. It took prolonged engagement with critical frameworks using creative modalities to deconstruct normativity. Normativity functions in education as an ideal, mythical benchmark (Walker, 2021a; Baglieri et al., 2011). There was an overwhelming presence of the Teacher as Savior trope (McGraw et al., 2025; Naraian, 2021). It was evident in my data that my intense desire to be a high-energy, creative teacher was an attempt to “save” my younger self from the boredom and masking I experienced in schooling. My focus was on my own emotional relationship to school instead of the actual needs of students. I was projecting to the point where I lied about playing the guitar to justify the arts as relevant to education, searching for approval.

As an autoethnographic study, this study does not aim to generalize my experiences. It adds my story as part of the greater, interconnected whole. This study had its unique strengths and limitations, which I explain in Table 6.1, represented as choices I made, and the double-edged strengths and limitations of those choices. 

Future Research

In future research, special attention should be devoted to creating frameworks that recognize oppression as interlocking and intersecting, with colonialism and capitalism being foundational to normative manifestations of behavior, pedagogy, classroom ‘management’, and school structures. This study invites privileged groups to exercise power in productive ways that challenge institutional power and normative expectations, as well as contending with one’s own complicities in replicating power structures. While this critical autoethnography was focused on teacher education and education coursework, future research is needed to examine how educators sustain anti-oppressive praxis as they transition to classroom teaching.

The arts-based aspect of this study provided a deeper engagement with the data, using critical, creative thinking through metaphors and “slow scholarship”. It is critically important to continue exploring how creative modalities can be a tool for resistance and ideological transformation, in teacher education and beyond. My early coursework almost exclusively used text-based essay formats and drew from white, nondisabled scholars, while my graduate coursework reflected multimodal engagement-- imagery, fiber arts, storytelling, and poetry drew from BIPOC, disabled self-advocates and scholars. 

Conclusion

"If we were not taught what we need to know now, we can lament that fact, but we cannot use it as an excuse not to engage in the learning we can do today. If we choose not to learn, we are responsible for that choice" (Chrona, 2022, p. 17).

My ongoing commitments to Disability Justice and the learning/unlearning process continue beyond this study. This arts-based critical autoethnography is a living story that confronts normativity, dissects how it operates, and uses fiber arts to communicate tensions throughout. This study invites educators to create meaning in their contexts, to trace their socialization into colonial and capitalistic notions of education.