De/constructing 'learning difficulties' in educational contexts
Dan Goodley, Inclusive Education and Equality Research Centre, University of Sheffield
Abstract
Education is an ideological battlefield (Apple, 1992) with poignant meanings for people with the label of learning difficulties. For many, child and adult life will involve participation in a whole host of professionalised educational and training contexts. This raises questions about the culture of knowledge into which people with learning difficulties are placed. This paper examines the ways in which the phenomenon of 'learning difficulties' is constructed in these contexts. First, I will trace recent developments in policy, professional practice and disability politics, which explicitly employ educational discourses. Second, I will introduce a narrative approach to interrogating these practices. Third, a narrative will be presented; life story of Gerry O'Toole. Fourth, I will outline the significance of an orientation (postmodernism), its methodology (poststructuralism) and a method (discourse analysis). The fifth section - de/constructing Gerry - offers three discourse analyses: (i) Constructing Gerry: the discursive construction of learning difficulties; (ii) Governing Gerry: The psy-complex, governance and subjectification and (iii) Deconstructing Gerry: Resistance and resilience. In order to address the over-riding themes of this ESRC seminar series, this paper links theory, lives, activism and practice in order to understand and challenge the pathological nature of educational contexts inhabited by people with learning difficulties.