Who Deserves Full Membership? Prospective Teachers' Constructions of Citizenship, Personhood, and Disability in Punjab's Initial Teacher Education

This qualitative research study explores pre-service teachers’ conceptions of citizenship, personhood, and disability in the context of pre-service teacher education in Punjab, Pakistan. Telephonic interviews were conducted with 12 pre-service teachers pursuing teacher-training in Punjab using the semi-structured life-world interview protocol. TurboScribe was used to perform the translation and transcription, and the subsequent analysis was done in NVivo 15 in the form of meaning condensation and thematic coding. The findings provided three themes: (1) conditional citizenship expressed in the form of deficit discourse; (2) disputed personhood expressed in terms of normative expectations; and (3) pedagogical ambivalence expressed in connection with inclusive education. Most pre-service teachers' dominant themes explained disabled students as objects of care, but not as rights-bearing citizens, thus placing the disability beyond the frame of full community membership. The research thus explains why teacher education reproduces the exclusionary ideas of citizenship, thus urging the high-stakes necessity of transformational pedagogical interventions that acknowledge the personhood and democratic participation of disabled students.