Throughout the research process I was aware of the following ethical issues and my attempts to address them may have resulted in limitations to the research:
• Insensitive handling of data may cause harm (Scott, 1997:162). The possibility of exploitation and potential power differential between researcher and informants needed to be acknowledged and sensitively handled. It was important not to create “researcher–researched’
hierarchies (Cole & Knowles, 2001, Harry, 1996) – especially as the informants were younger than me and could have considered themselves to be from a “socially stigmatized” group.
• It was important to conceal identities of all participants in order to ensure anonymity and confidentiality, so it was necessary to fictionalize to an extent (Burgess, 1995, Cole & Knowles, 2001).
• Informed consent, particularly as informants were children, who need to fully understand the nature of the research and their involvement, (Burgess, 1995) had to be ensured by seeking consent not only from the parents but also from the children who would be the participants.
Where access was granted by teachers and/ or parents, this did not imply access has been granted by the informants / children. In addition to this parents/ teachers may have acted as gate-keepers (Burgess, 1995) preventing the children from participating even where they may have wished to.
• Where changes occurred during the process that could nullify informed consent (Harry, 1996) informed consent had to be reviewed
Other limitations relate to the quantity and quality of data:
• The amount of information that was shared by informants was dependent on the relationship between the researcher and the informant.
This is discussed in detail in Chapter Three.
• There may have been some feelings and experiences informants do not even recognize and were thus unable to discuss. In addition to this memory failures (Bailey, 1987) could have resulted in inaccurate or reduced recall.
• There may have been experiences the informants did not want to share; it is not easy to discuss stressful issues and there may be much, particularly regarding their educational experiences, that the informants find stressful (Lloyd-Smith & Davis, 1995:11). Bailey (1987:177) refers to both deliberate lying and unconscious mistakes made by informants, particularly where there is not enough trust between the informant and the researcher for the informant to feel comfortable
• The deeply personal rationale results in me bringing a strong emotional attachment to the process. I have declared my subjectivity up front, but the difficulty retaining a “rational subjectivity” may also be considered a limitation.
Another potential limitation could be with regard to access:
• The sites or schools to which I had access resulted in a limited pool from which to select informants. The result of this is that the informants all came from one area (geographical), the same race, culture, language, and socio-economic group.
In this chapter I have outlined the rationale for this study. I have given the personal and the more “academic” reasons. However strong the personal motivation may have been though, this research really only developed out of a frustration with the literature that seemed lacking, that was not describing the children that I know. It is therefore necessary to review the literature in the field and identify the gaps and silences that proved the true motivation for this research. I do this is the following chapter.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW: focusing the lens
1. Introduction
In the previous chapter I described the focus of and rationale for my research, and gave a brief overview of the methodological approach I adopted.
Informing this, however, is what I have read in both past and current literature:
research that has shaped my own understanding of LD. In this chapter then I present an overview of that research and challenge the apparent hegemony of what I described as reductionist and overly empiricist approaches in the previous chapter. There is a dual focus in this chapter, a focus on content and a focus on methodology. The latter is part of the study’s analytical framework primarily because life history is both a methodological strategy and a conceptual framework. In the first part of this chapter the predominant research paradigms in the study of LD are identified and critiqued, leading to the motivation for the present study and the proposed alternative approach to understanding learning disability. In the second part of this chapter I attempt to analyze the current literature in the field of learning disability by
“deconstructing the concept to identify the attributes or characteristics, assumptions, gaps, limitations, differing perspectives” (Morse & Mitcham, 2002:7). My purpose is to show how the predominant focus of research in the field perpetuates a fragmented view of LD.
As this is a large and somewhat amorphous field, without clear boundaries, I present this overview of the content of the literature by categorizing it according to area of focus. I present the literature according to the prevalent themes. These are defining LD, managing LD and experiencing LD. I begin this process with a detailed review of research that attempts to define the perplexing phenomenon so loosely referred to as “LD,” and attempts to
fragments LD: current research that tends to focus on specific deficits identified as part of the “syndrome” or phenomenon of LD. I refer to this as reductionist in the previous chapter. I therefore review research that focuses on the parts or components of the phenomenon of LD. In the following section I review the literature around management of LD within this reductionist paradigm, in other words the “fixing” of the “faulty parts” of the learner. I include in this latter discussion a brief overview of the inclusive education debate as I return to the issue of inclusive education when presenting my data.
It is in presenting my data that the need for a new approach to managing LD will become clear. A key factor in precipitating this change will be an understanding of the way children with LD experience their LD.
As I aim to illuminate what it is like to experience LD, I move towards a justification of the methodological choices I make, by introducing research that looks at experiencing LD. Laing (1967) claims that experience is the only evidence. This is resonant with Bruner’s claim that: “lived experience as thought and desire, as word and image is the primary reality” (Bruner, 1986:50). I have introduced the concept of experience: what it is, and how it is defined for the purposes of this research, in Chapter One.
In the final part of this chapter I introduce the concept of identity, and I look at different modes of identity construction. I therefore ask: Is there a LD identity?
I focus mainly on how experience is turned into narrative and explore the various ways in which children with LD use narrative conventions to give meaning, value and significance to their varied experiences.
In this way the literature review will reinforce the rationale for my research and move towards the methodological choices made, which are discussed in detail in the following chapter. However it is necessary first to briefly describe the predominant research paradigms, as it is the very dominance of these paradigms that I challenge.
2. Dominant research paradigms: Review of methodologies used in