“Teach Me, Don’t Label Me”: Reading Specialist Candidates Reflect on the Discourses That Shape Their Work With “Special” Students

• In Event: Labeling and Performing (Dis)ability in Education

Abstract

This paper presentation is the second manuscript drawn from a program of research designed to understand how reading specialist certification candidates use language and actions to construct and position (1) themselves as “teachers” and (2) their students as capable or as “disabled.” Previously we examined the reading specialist certification candidates’ efforts to make sense of their work in the Summer Reading Camp (Authors, 2011). In this study we follow the reading specialist teacher candidates beyond the summer Reading Camp and, through their reflective reports, into their student teaching contexts. How did these teacher candidates navigate the discourses they encountered in their student teaching placements? How did their response to those discourses shape their perceptions of their work with students?

Authors

• Kathleen M. Collins, The Pennsylvania State University

• Patrick Shannon, The Pennsylvania State University

• Kathleen Shannon, The Pennsylvania State University