Q.B.E.
That is, “qualified by experience.” (Rather than, as cited in Wikipedia, query by example.)
My husband Jim Fisher brought up this term after Kassiane Sibley noted that, of all the speakers at the October 27th Autism and Advocacy Conference, she alone did not have any letters (M.Div., Ph.D., M.A., etc.) after her name. Jim noted that she is Q.B.E.—-a phrase that Kassiane had used in reference to herself when Jim first spoke to her in July.
It’s a degree that I am still taking introductory course in.
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POSTED IN: Autism Advocacy Conference, College, Disability Rights, Education, Language, Rhetoric
17 opinions for Q.B.E.
Lisa/Jedi
Oct 30, 2006 at 11:41 am
I really like this designation! I am also someone who had the “brains” to go on to higher education but due to life-circumstances did not go further than an AAS (2-year degree) from a community college. My “lack of credentials” has dogged me throughout life & I find it increasingly obnoxious that I would not be “qualified” for jobs that I am fully capable of because I don’t have a masters degree… It has been a struggle at times to find a sense of self-worth when society is telling me that I have to go back to school in order to be respected in my “circle”. I was very fortunate to have worked in a research lab that encouraged me to do original research & allowed me to publish & present my work without having the proper letters after my name. Since leaving the lab I have found a mostly comfortable niche as a fibre-artist & teacher. I have found a sense of purpose & worth in being a parent, & thanks to B, an autism parent. This has allowed me to come to feel that it’s society’s loss if they want to cut me out of things because of the lack of “qualifications”. There are many of us in the world who slipped through the academic cracks, for many reasons, & I appreciate Jim’s acknowledgement that academic “letters” do not necessarily equal worth or experience.
Someone
Oct 30, 2006 at 11:59 am
But the thing about personal experience is that it’s just that: personal. It can’t be stretched or applied to other individuals unless if they had the exact same experiences as the person talking (if that makes any sense).
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 30, 2006 at 1:23 pm
I’m not so sure about the need for “exact” experience—there must be some commonality to start with.
Someone
Oct 30, 2006 at 8:24 pm
I can understand your point. What I was trying to say was that she can’t speak for every autistic person.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 30, 2006 at 9:00 pm
A few parents noted that their kids are quite enthusiastic about clapping; I can see how the action of clapping might provide (perhaps) some deep pressure sensation.
Kassiane
Oct 31, 2006 at 7:04 am
No more can I speak for every autistic person than Kristina can speak for every parent.
It IS a pretty good bet, though, that I have a better handle on what it is to be autistic in this world, than an NT parent of an autistic kid-no matter how well they know their child they AREN’T their child, and no, they cannot read their child’s mind, even if sometimes it feels like they’re being required to.
Some things CAN be generalized. IE to a sound sensitive person (pretty common, but not universal, along the spectrum) clapping is rather like being on a gun range where everyone is firing at will. As emergency vehicles start to hurt my ears before other people NOTICE them-something Mike McCarron, another conferencegoer, pointed out in another post-it’s fair to say that I’m going to at least be in the right zip code, if not the right sporting arena of choice, with description of sound pain quality. Not necessarily QUANTITY, I have a WEIRD audiogram, but quality.
QBE does NOT mean “my experience is the same as everyone like me’s experience” because no 2 people are alike. QBE means life made you an expert, gave you more FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE of a subject that you just can’t CHOOSE, or it’s not all that common to choose. It’s not a degree you can study for. You get it or you don’t. And the programs are endless.
David N. Andrews MEd (Dec 2006)
Oct 31, 2006 at 5:51 pm
Kassiane said, rather wisely: “QBE does NOT mean ‘my experience is the same as everyone like me’s experience’ because no 2 people are alike. QBE means life made you an expert, gave you more FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE of a subject that you just can’t CHOOSE, or it’s not all that common to choose. It’s not a degree you can study for. You get it or you don’t. And the programs are endless.”
The way I see QBE working is that it isn’t the experience that qualifies… it’s what one learns from that experience. One can have years and years of experience in a particular activity, but if one has learned nothing from it… then it was wasted years, regarding that experience’s educational value.
If, on the other hand, someone has years and years of experience in a given activity (for example, a certain aspect of life), and has observed patterns in the relationships between events and between objects and has gone on then to find out why the relationships are there and how they work … then, that person has learned something that could well be useful. Bit general, I know, but there’s specifics to it.
One approach to working with autistic adults is to see the supporting of achievment of of developmental gains as being a part of something called ‘life-long learning’; in essence, one is always learning… sadly, it sounds too much like that ‘teachable moment’ stuff, but this is where that idea comes from, really. So, Kassiane here, having been born autistic and dealing with life from this perspective, has noted certain relationships between events and between objects, and has basically put two and two together each time… and come up very reasonably close to four all the time that she’s made headway, and also learned from the times when what she thought was two-and-two didn’t turn out to make four (but were in fact, say, five and nine… different sum entirely). All the time, she’s been learning from this experience of life. This learning may not have been in ways that the system would actually acknoledge it, but it has been there. At least, this is how an educational slant on Kelly’s Personal Construct Psychology would see Kassiane’s development of a sense of who she is, and what she likes, and so on. So, Kassiane is not in fact Qualified By Experience: she is Qualified By Life-long Learning (QBLL).
To Kassiane: sorry for using your situation straight out like this as an example of what I mean, but since you were described as QBE (with all its inherent vaguaries
David N. Andrews MEd (Dec 2006)
Oct 31, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Oops. Bit got lost:
To Kassiane: sorry for using your situation straight out like this as an example of what I mean, but since you were described as QBE (with all its inherent vaguaries
David N. Andrews MEd (Dec 2006)
Oct 31, 2006 at 5:56 pm
This is infuriating.
To Kassiane: sorry for using your situation straight out like this as an example of what I mean, but since you were described as QBE (with all its inherent vaguaries -sp?), I figured that it might suit you better to have something to say that was more specific and that signifies that you have learned and developed as a person, rather than having been ‘through experiences’ in the same way as a particle does in physics. I hope you don’t mind, and I sincerely hope that the idea of being QBLL feels a lot better than QBE.
(there was a weird reserved character in my original post)
Someone
Oct 31, 2006 at 6:05 pm
You all have good points. Although I feel that my general point that “one cannot speak for all” (or perhaps even the majority) still firmly stands.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 31, 2006 at 8:32 pm
It does.
Nonetheless, I think it also the case that e pluribus unum—”out of many [and even most], one.”
Ballastexistenz
Oct 31, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Remember that the ‘experience’ being described is NOT only the personal experience of being autistic. It is often the experience of being exposed to many other autistic people, and their families, and of being exposed to ideas about disability that not everyone is exposed to, and so on and so forth. I don’t have a degree in anything either, but it’s really infuriating when people reduce my fairly well-educated opinions on disability to “just because I’m disabled” rather than because I’ve put years of both practical and booklike study into the matter.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 31, 2006 at 9:52 pm
“Someone”: Are you on the spectrum?
Someone
Oct 31, 2006 at 10:59 pm
Yes, I am residual autistic.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Nov 1, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Someone, thanks for sharing this—
David N. Andrews MEd (Dec 2006)
Nov 2, 2006 at 9:56 am
Ballastexestenz: “I don’t have a degree in anything either, but it’s really infuriating when people reduce my fairly well-educated opinions on disability to ‘just because I’m disabled’ rather than because I’ve put years of both practical and booklike study into the matter.”
Odd you mention this. I’d always thought that you had some sort of formal education along with the learning-from-experience stuff. The writings you produce show a depth of understanding not evident in those of some other persons we are aware of… no names, no pack-drill. You have control over the thread of your writings in a way that many don’t. The background knowledge you have that comes through in what you write is clear, and can be seen to be carefully applied to the situation about which you write.
Similar thing with Kassiane, actually. When she writes, the experience shows through, sure; but there is evidence that she’s learned from something in that experience… it isn’t just the experience being related in the text, but rather it is how that experience has affected her in terms of thinking, feeling and doing things.
When universities look at prior experiential learning, this is what they look for: not the experience, but that which was learned from having gone through that experience.
And it is clear in the texts that you and Kassiane both produce.
David N. Andrews MEd (Dec 2006)
Nov 2, 2006 at 9:57 am
damn… Ballastexistenz… sorry… typing in the dark here…
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