Former students, current parents exploring identity sensemaking processes in special education
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This qualitative study explores how five adults, former special education students who now parent children in similar special education classrooms engage in identity sensemaking. The research purpose of this study is to explore how these adults, now parents of children identified with educational disabilities, make sense of their special education experiences as former students and current parents. Using discursive-narrative methods, the stories and talk from online Story Circle, small group, and individual interview sessions are analyzed by using Gee's identity analysis (2000) and De Fina's level 3 positioning (2013) analytic frameworks. These analyses focus on how identity is recognized and positioned in conversation with dominant narratives about educational disability. The results of these analyses show the prevalence of stigmatizing silences related to disability. Links to dominant narratives found in these participants' narrated experiences also reveal how silences were interrupted by messages that specialized instruction related to identified educational disability could be escaped or overcome and that the experience of being in special education was marked with messages that disability identity was situated within a stigmatized hierarchy of dis/ability. Each participant made sense of their experiences as students in ways that involved combinations of accepting, rejecting and complicating dominant messages about what it means to be the kind of student who is in special education. All recognized their unique positioning to intentionally model what it is like to be the kind of person identified as needing special education for their children. These participants valued the opportunity to disrupt stigmatizing silences connected to this identity. This study offers valuable insights for special education, including potential future directions for the field to increase work focused on understanding the lived experiences of students identified with educational disabilities.
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Ph. D.