Ability Across Contexts: A Cross-Context Ethnography of Identity Development for Students With Disabilities

• In Event: Roundtable Session 79
  In Roundtable Session: Cross-Context Studies of Learners’ Experiences of and in Activity

Abstract

Purpose
Research on students with disabilities traditionally focuses on classroom behavior. When considering questions of identity development, however, it is important to recognize school experiences are not always associated with positive self-worth (Burden, 2008). This paper discusses cross-context ethnography as a method for capturing the variety of meaningful lived experiences that shape identities.

Theoretical Framework
We conceptualize identity as ever-shifting social creations constructed through lived experiences with others (Holland et al, 1998). People can have multiple identities, constructed through social interactions and personal agency, and constantly revised through participation in situated action. Students who have a disability in one setting do not have to be defined by this label in all contexts depending on how ability is perceived. To study how they form identities around ability, we look at how they participate across diverse contexts (Dreier, 2002). This framework lends itself to multi-context studies, which allow researchers to observe how different learning environments expand or restrict opportunities for participation.
Methods
This study is a two-year, cross-context ethnography of 12 high school students with autism or learning disabilities. The students were selected from three high schools in Washington and California, for involvement in informal, school-based programs. Through ethnography, we collected a diverse range of data, took an active, continuous role in their lives, engaged in a constant process of theory building, and highlighted participant voices (Walford, 2008). Since discourse helps reveal how identities are shaped (Gee, 2000), we recorded how students engaged in "talk-in-interaction" (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). By following students across informal and formal environments, we could appreciate the combined power these contexts have on youth identity (Phelan, Davidson, and Cao, 1991).

Data Sources
We collected video-recorded observations and field notes in informal, school-based programs, academic classes, and at home. While participant observation and monthly interviews focused on case study students, we also interviewed 12 non-disabled students and 15 teachers. In total, we had 118 student participants and 20 teachers in the study.

Conclusions
Through a sequential analysis of transcribed observations, we found student participation (and its value) varied across contexts, depending on how actions were perceived by people with influence over the setting. In each context, students were positioned differently by themselves and others, based on whether they felt valued or viewed as “disabled”. Through discourse analysis, we found students were aware of being positioned and strategic about what they did to belong, compete, and be valued. Collecting data across contexts allowed us to represent students’ participation and consequent identity formation as it actually occurred – along a cultural learning pathway unfolding across diverse contexts interrelated to one another (cf., Lee, 2008).

Significance
Cross-context ethnography is a useful methodological tool for understanding participation in diverse experiences with others over time. Since these youth carry labels that result from how institutions of schooling define ability and potential, it is important to study how their participation is perceived in other contexts and how they make meaning of these experiences. This approach represents how youth negotiate multiple identities throughout their lives.

Author

• AnnMarie Darrow Baines, San Francisco State University