Cripping the Curriculum and the Clinic: Toward a Unified Ethic of Care in Education and Healthcare for Persons with Disabilities

This paper advocates for a cohesive ethic of care that connects educational and healthcare 
frameworks via the analytical perspective of "cripping," a technique rooted in Crip Theory that 
interrogates conventional beliefs, reveals ableist frameworks, and prioritises the experiences of 
individuals with disabilities. Utilising principles of disability justice and critical disability studies, 
the article engages in a conceptual and theoretical analysis that dismantles the analogous 
structures of ableism shaping both educational curricula and clinical practices, exposing how 
medical and deficit frameworks consistently pathologise disability and impose restrictive norms 
of normalcy. Through a critical interpretive review of existing scholarship across healthcare and 
education spanning diagnostic and treatment methodologies in clinical settings as well as 
pedagogical strategies from classroom to campus the analysis reveals how systemic shortcomings 
contribute to the exclusion, segregation, and lowered expectations for individuals with disabilities. 
The document subsequently develops a cohesive ethic of care grounded in the tenets of 
interdependence, process-oriented access, the significance of lived experiences, and principles of 
systemic adaptability, which provide tools for not only reforming education and healthcare but 
also for fostering a more equitable society for all. The conclusion tackles the difficulties of 
implementation, warns against the superficial appropriation of access discourse, and urges a 
collective effort for transformative change across institutional limits. This cohesive ethic, shaped 
by experiences of disability, serves as a vital foundation for reimagining institutional practices 
through a justice-oriented lens.