Reliance on field notes vs. audio/video recordings limited DP analysis. Researchers couldn't repeatedly listen to interactions as is typical. Data became researcher constructions rather than objective records.

Field Notes Limitation

DP views thinking/learning as socially constructed through interactions, not internal cognition. It was used as a "sensitizing frame" rather than standalone method. This perspective challenged cognitivist competency notions.

Discursive Psychology (DP) as a "Sensitizing Frame"

The study defined discourse broadly beyond language. Gestures, eye gaze, spatial positioning counted as valid communicative actions. This captured non-linguistic ways students expressed themselves.

Multimodal Discourse

This is a three-year study in a Southeastern US separate school setting. Used constant comparative analysis with multiple data sources (field notes, interviews, artifacts). Combined macro thematic and micro discourse approaches.

Research Design: Post-Critical Ethnography

This study innovatively combined DSE frameworks with DP approaches. Jefferson and Mondada techniques captured environmental factors usually ignored. This mixing raised questions about DP's compatibility with other methods.

Methodological Synthesis

- Discursive Psychology as a "Sensitizing Frame"
- Multimodal Discourse
- Post-Critical Ethnography
- Methodological Synthesis
- Field Notes Limitation

State University of New York at Binghamton

This study uses Discursive Psychology to examine how disability is actively constructed through classroom interactions for students with significant intellectual disabilities. Three themes were found: compliance-focused instruction, student disengagement, and suppressed relational desires. The authors argue that ABA-rooted systematic instruction ideology produces disability rather than reveals it, recognizing students for deficits rather than humanity. An innovative mixed-method approach was used, but limited by field notes vs. video data.

Chapter 5: The Discursive Construction of Severe Dis/Ability in One School in the Southeastern United States

Lester, J. N. (Ed.). (2021). Discursive Psychology and Disability. Palgrave Studies in Discursive Psychology. Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Reference For: Discursive Psychology and Disability

Research Design and Methods: The study's methodological approach, innovations, and constraints

- Instructional Control Mechanisms - How teacher-directed practices create and maintain power imbalances
- Theoretical Foundations - Core concepts framing the disability construction argument
- Disability as Constructed by Ideology

Disability Construction Process - How disability gets actively produced in educational settings

Students with significant intellectual and developmental disabilities represent only 5% of all individuals with ID labels. They're dramatically under-represented in research. This population experiences unique educational contexts often in separate settings.

SIDD Population

Chapter 5 discusses students labeled with significant intellectual/developmental disabilities (SIDD). DP applications challenge positivist/limited conceptions of intelligence uncovering "disability as an ideology" through the micro-analysis of teacher/student interactions.

Response to D’Ardenne et al. (Chapter 5: Complex Support Needs)

- The Core Constraint (Structure vs. Impairment)
- The Critique (Agency & Practice)
- The Mechanism of "Communication" (The Outcome)

Learn Before

Related

Learn After