Speaker 1 (00:12):
Okay. Hello, and welcome to the Lived Expertise is Greater Than Degrees podcast.

Kayla Concannon (00:20):
My name is Kayla Concannon. My pronouns are she, her, hers. And I am a neuro divergent and bisexual occupational therapist, educator, researcher, accessibility analyst and human rights advocate in the Philadelphia area. The idea for this Lived Expertise is Greater Than Degrees podcast is because as an occupational therapist and now working on a doctorate in education, I have been trained to use evidence-based practice, to be able to cite an article for every decision that I make, for every client that I see, for every treatment plan, for every goal, for every intervention. And one thing that I've learned along the way is that there are a lot of perspectives missing from those articles, from those peer-reviewed journals and from those textbooks.

(01:33):
As a provider that tries to operate from a #nothingaboutuswithoutus perspective, I realized that almost all of the research and the scholarly sources are without the people that it's written about. There's participatory action research where people might be involved in the process, but it's very rare to have inclusive research methods and for folks with diverse experiences to be the producers of that research and of those respected sources.

(02:20):
Now, in my doctorate, in my doctoral research, I have been considering how inclusive research methods are very rare, how maybe I can role model improving that research process, and also why that process still needs improving. One of the things that is clear to me is that we have a lot of ableism in academia and pretty much everywhere, right? (laughs). We have ableism in academia that prevents folks with disabilities or disabled people, however they choose to identify, um, that prevents them from being successful in the system, because the system is not an accessible place.

(03:17):
So, when they are in K-12 education and they have IEPs, individualized education plans, and then individualized transition plans and behaviour plans and behaviour therapists and they are segregated down the, quote unquote, special ed hallway with a lot of adults and a lot of providers, these folks end up with learned compliance and reduced expectations. Um, the bar is set low and in order to set the bar higher, we need to empower folks to be themselves and to take care of themselves and to develop healthy relationship with themselves and their mind and heart and body so that they can make and manage healthy relationships with other people, whether those are familial, or platonic, or with your community, or online, or romantic. And that's what I do in my business is I have a business called Collaborative Relational and Sexual Health Consulting where I support clients and couples and organizations with all the complexities of those relationships.

(04:43):
And when I was doing research on relationships and disability, it was very clear that the perspectives of people with disabilities was not included. There was a lot of information on staff opinions and parent opinions and frankly, that doesn't really matter to me. Um, I think the staff and families, um, they play a role. But that's such a person by person basis that that research is not really that significant to me. What is significant to me is the trends of neuro divergent folks and what they want out of relationships with other people and where they think they might struggle and where they want to learn more.

(05:39):
And so, Lived Expertise is Greater Than Degrees is about how no matter how many credentials after your name, no matter how much education you have, no matter who you know, you can't be an expert in something that you haven't experienced. And especially when it comes to neuro diversity and disability in general, there's so much intersectionality and intersectional identities that get forgotten, because disability can be part of someone's life regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion, size, gender, sexuality, age, socioeconomic status and every other type of factor, demographic information that we can measure.

(06:38):
It really is essential information to ask people for their own perspectives and to trust that they know more about themselves than we could ever know as someone who isn't them. And I think that's where a lot of political conversations get into the weeds and get to a non-productive place is trying to speak on behalf of something that you haven't experienced. So, this podcast is all about getting back to the source and empowering people to share their perspectives. All of the future guests on this podcast are awesome. I'm (laughs), I'm recording this after, uh, this... I'm recording this introduction after I have interviewed several people and they are very cool people with, uh, so much experience that they've shared with us, and they've been paid for their time and it really is invaluable.

(07:51):
A couple of questions that I ask a lot of my guests are, "What does lived expertise is greater than degrees mean to you?" And to me, it just means that I can't be an expert in something I haven't experienced, no matter how much I read about it, no matter how many TikTokers I follow. No matter (laughs) how many journal articles I cite. It's not something that you can learn about. It's something you experience. And the best way to learn about something that you don't experience is to learn from people who have experienced it, not people who have just observed.

(08:39):
I ask my guests, what's an important thing that they learned in school and how did they learn this lesson? For me, um, one very important thing that I learned in school was how to be critical. Uh, I was lucky to go to a five-year masters in occupational therapy program that was heavily focused on research. And now I'm in a doctorate in education program where I will end up with an EDD. And it is an EDD that will be completed with PhD rigor, which is exactly what I was looking for. And through these research heavy programs, I have learned how to be critical and analyze information that's presented to me, to fact check, to check the sources, to check the credibility, to consider the author's positionality and epistemology and this has become invaluable in my work and in my personal life. I think being critical is possible without being skeptical and although the state of the world definitely takes me to a pessimistic place sometimes, I am learning from some very gracious people how to be critical and also hopeful.

(10:15):
One of the most important things that I've learned outside of school is open-mindedness. School, no matter how many years of it I've done, never really taught me to be open-minded. I went to Catholic school and public school and a private Jesuit college where I g- went through an OT program and I had minors in counseling and human services and American sign language. And American sign language classes and volunteering with my incredible professor was the closest that (laughs) I really got to open-mindedness because my professor and the families that my professor introduced me to showed me how many different ways a family can look, and how many different ways a family can come together and grow apart, and that there's no right or wrong way to do life as long as your autonomy is not harming anybody else.

(11:27):
I say that the ABCs of healthy relationships are autonomy, boundaries and consent, and without those ABCs, we can't have healthy relationships with other people. And open-mindedness definitely fits within those ABCs. We shouldn't be quick to judge other people or assume that we know what's going on. We have to be sensitive and trauma informed and aware that our perspective is bias. No matter how intentional we are about trying to learn and remove that bias, it, it will always be there.

(12:13):
So, being open-minded is something that has taken some effort to prioritize outside of school, to be comfortable in admitting what I don't know and asking for help and really (laughs), my, my open-mindedness leads me a- down all sorts of, uh, worm holes of information and it helps me to keep some hope when I go on the news or on social media and find out about the most recent bad thing that's happening. Being critical and open-minded has been really helpful to me in my early career and my start as an entrepreneur and a researcher and just as a friend and a person.

(13:14):
So, my main lesson that I'm hoping that listeners take away from this episode is that I'm glad you're here and I hope that you keep listening to this podcast because I've interviewed some of the coolest people that I've encountered. But also, it's not all about this podcast. It's about meeting people where they're at, wherever they are. And there's so much information that you can get out in the world, both paid and for free, through peer reviewed spaces. We talk about peer reviewed spaces, meaning like journal articles, textbooks, um, and published books. But I think peer reviewed can also mean socially peer reviewed and checking out neuro divergent creators and, um, disabled perspectives in other sorts of media, like podcasts, YouTube videos, social media, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Now, all these sorts of systems have their own flaws, but what I will say is that these virtual opportunities to learn from folks tend to be more accessible and tend to be less biased than what is published elsewhere.

(14:49):
So, please listen to this and listen to other people and remember, nothing about us without us, and that lived expertise is greater than degrees, and let's keep up the good work. Bye.