Poetry pedagogy and university students with intellectual disabilities

Little is known about the level of poetry appreciation that can be achieved by university students with intellectual disabilities. Indeed, there are limited studies that provide knowledge of poetry pedagogy for teachers of this group of individuals. Going some way to address the paucity of research in this area, this paper advances an approach to poetry pedagogy which is built on three tenets: (1) Teacher and positioning; (2) Student and the poetic voice, and (3) Language, metalanguage and poetry writing. It is argued that these tenets have the potential to become a powerful tool for people with intellectual disabilities to explore their self and social identity, and a medium to question and challenge the ideational world that these individuals are situated in. For teachers, utilising this poetry pedagogy encourages a critical reflexive practice which has the potential to enhance the relationship between teachers' positions and identities and the way this is enacted in the classroom.