“I was planning on going to an actual real school rather than a program like this”; Students with intellectual disabilities informing adult special education
Date
2020-08
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Abstract
This study is a critical ethnography exploring the experiences of four students with an intellectual disability (ID) label enrolled in an adult special education program in British Columbia, Canada. The study focused on the following broad questions: 1) How is adult special education programming at a post-secondary institution socially organized? and 2) How is knowledge and power reflected in the academic and social activities of students with ID through text? Data were collected through in-depth interviews, a focus group, observations, review of documents, and self-reflexive journaling. It was interpreted thematically, and three prominent themes were uncovered: Bureaucratic Structure: Text and Disability, Control and Compliance and Normality: “Don’t Act Like A Kid”, and Social Relations: Who Belongs Where? A main finding was that ID students are reliable and capable research participants. Another finding was that specialized programs fail to deliver an education that recognizes student’s identity, competence, learning, human rights, or sense of belonging. A further finding was that post-secondary structures subjectivized ID students as child-like, dependent, and incapable. The results of this study begin to add a critical perspective to the scholarship and practice related to intellectual disability and post-secondary education.
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Keywords
Disability, Adult Special Education
Citation
Swan, T. L. (2020). “I was planning on going to an actual real school rather than a program like this”; Students with intellectual disabilities informing adult special education (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.