Enabling Ableism: Using Academic Integrity Arguments to Create Disability in Testing Environments

Academic integrity is a culturally constructed idea based on a notion of fairness. In testing, fairness is typically evoked with equality of testing parameters and environments. Proctoring and other testing restrictions are supported by claims that these approaches ensure academic integrity. Drawing on a social model of disability, this chapter acknowledges that acknowledging post-secondary education as a system was designed to meet the needs of some learners and not others. Specifically, the chapters highlight how testing practices continue this ability bias through practices that police student body-minds. Normative learners’ needs are accounted for in testing practices and therefore benefit from equating fairness with sameness. The behaviors of non-normative body-minds, such as students with disabilities, are labeled as indicators of academic misconduct, resulting in increased scrutiny. Non-normative learners must engage in additional work, either conforming to restrictions or identifying as disabled. Accommodations in testing environments are continually challenges on the basis of violating academic integrity and challenging the equality of the writing environment. Since calls to academic integrity can be used to perpetuate inequities in post-secondary education, it is important to identify how assessment practices can be used to further marginalize learners.