environments I have either worked in or visited, learners are constantly told by teachers, and in some cases parents, how lucky they are to have been chosen to attend the school. They are reassured that they have been
‘selected’ because they can achieve. This then feeds into a positive self esteem. What makes them different to their classmates or peers in this context may be their creativity, their hair, eye or skin colour, their athletic prowess and such. Learning difficulties and failure are no longer the things that set them apart or make them different to the group.
Self knowledge is acquired not only through social comparisons but also by
“performance feedback” (Kernis & Goldman, 2003) This is particularly relevant for the discussion that follows where I show how these factors have impacted on my informants’ self-knowledge. Actions, especially most recent actions, also influence self appraisal (the way the child thinks about himself) (Kernis & Goldman, 2003). In the case of the child with LD, if the immediate experience is of success, praise and positive feedback, this can then impact on the away we he views his LD. Thus opportunities for success and for achievement in other spheres become important, to counterbalance the classroom failure. I am therefore interested in how the opportunity to experience success changes their self identity, if at all.
following chapter. I conclude this chapter by presenting an analytical framework which I see as an alternative way of understanding LD. I propose that a different picture may emerge if we focus on how the child with LD interprets his/her condition. I believe we can see this if we explore the child’s experiences of LD and how these experiences impact on the construction of his/her identity. In the following chapter I present and justify the methodology used in an attempt to illuminate these experiences.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK:
pushing the button
In this chapter I elaborate on the methodology and research design covered superficially in Chapter One. My responsibility as a researcher is to attempt to “validate [my] informed guesses.”16 The purpose of this chapter therefore is not only to position the research but also to position the researcher (Henning, 2004:26), and I attempt to clarify my own positioning. The rationale for choosing a qualitative, life history design is described. The research process, through all three stages or phases, is described and the chapter closes as a framework for data analysis is outlined. This is developed further in the following chapters where data are presented and I begin the process of analyzing and interpreting.
1. Introduction
By making choices about LDs ontology and epistemology I present one specific way of understanding the phenomenon of LD. These choices, described in Chapter One, are illustrated in the flow chart below:
16 http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/jcme/papers/1986-ai-memo-871/ subsection3_6_1.html )
Nature of truth multiple truths
Paradigm interpretivist / hermeneutic
Focus Phenomenology/ Lived experience
Methodology: life history/ narrative
construction of identity
The focus of this study is the lived experiences of children with learning disability. The rationale for the present study arose partly out of a dissatisfaction with the themes or the theories being generated by research that is reductionist and deficit-focused. I have described much research that is framed within the medical, logical-empiricist model in the preceding chapter. I have illustrated how this results in research which is deficit- focused, in other words the focus is on pathology (Bailey, 1998:49).
Furthermore the fact that this phenomenon of learning disability is researched in fairly distinct and semi-autonomous fields, with little interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research, results in reductionism, where fragments of the problem are researched. I aim, through this research, to develop a new, broader understanding of LD and thus hope to reinterpret the experience of LD in a new, more positive way as Oliver suggests when he says: “…with the developing of a politics of personal identity, the experience of disability is being reinterpreted in positive rather than negative terms” (Oliver, 1996:131).
Identity is fluid and ever-changing and we adopt different identities in order to belong to specific groups (Ryan & Deci, 2003:10). By exploring more fully what it means to “have” or to “be LD” I am interested to see whether an “LD identity” is acquired, and if it is, how it is conceptualized and present in a narrative of self-identity. Ricoeur (1991:28) suggests that it is only in narrating our lives that we give then meaning when he states: “a life is no more than a biological phenomenon as long as it has not been interpreted.” A life story can be seen as a narrativisation of that period between life and death. In fact Eakin (1999:113) talks about “a lifelong trajectory of self narration.” I propose that a new way of understanding LD may develop from an exploration of this very interpretation, in other words the way the individual interprets her experience of LD. It should thus be apparent that my chosen methodology serves both as a methodological strategy and an analytical framework as I look at how my informants transform their experience into a cohesive narrative of identity.