Supervisors info:
Τσάφος Βασίλειος, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Εκπαίδευσης και Αγωγής στην Προσχολική Ηλικία, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Summary:
In recent years, the number of children that have been diagnosed with learning disabilities has increased dramatically, raising questions about the rationale of this increase, on the one hand, and on the other hand about the ways of childhood construction and the role of the school in it. Although special education is presented as a one-way course, in fact these pupils experience exclusion and marginalization in the classroom and outside. The need to explore marginalized groups of children at regulatory frameworks, such as school, is consistent with the objectives of the research for inclusion aimed at identifying and limit exclusion, which is experienced by pupils in the school context and, in particular, by those with disabilities .
The aim of this research is to highlight the voices of children, experiencing barriers to learning and participation within the educational framework, to explore children's discourse for exclusion and its forms, to highlight the ways with which they engage in and face the various forms of exclusion, and in addition to find the social and psychological factors for the construction of disabled' child identity. The ultimate goal is to explore how the disabled child and generally childhood is constructed in discourse, at socio-political level through the various relations of power within the school framework and their modern approaches.
The present research is a qualitative research involving five (5) children attending primary school, who have been diagnosed with learning difficulties. The tools which were used to collect the data were the semi-structured interview and researcher's calendar, and the analysis of the data was based on a combination of thematic content analysis and discourse analysis, in order to explore in depth not only what has been said but also what is silent.
The analysis highlighted the social and psychological factors that contribute to the construction of the disabled child identity and how they contribute to the exclusion of the pupil from school life. The role of the student in this context is construed as passive, while rating, appraisal practices, competition, deprivation, prejudice, and teachers themselves have become barriers to learning and participation. Finally, because of school failure, exclusion and discrimination that pupils experience at school, they resort to social comparison to achieve a positive identity by placing pupils of different nationality and race at lower classes of school hierarchy.
Keywords:
exclusion, children’s voices, identity, disability, learning difficulties
