It's All About Relationships: Rewriting the Narrative of Supporting "Challenging" Behavior

• In Event: 52.064 - Disability Studies in Education: Promoting Justice Through Critical Narratives and Lived Experiences

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how mentor and preservice teachers take up and resist dominant discourses surrounding “challenging” behavior for students with disabilities. The paper discusses how mentor educators situate behavior for emerging special educators, and how these approaches to and philosophies of behavior are translated to and refined by preservice teachers. Through direct modeling and continuous reflection, mentor educators deconstruct common understandings of behavior as something done to them by students and reposition behavior as a method of communication, where they find ways to work with and support students utilizing positive, strength based and relational alternatives to traditional approaches to behavior management (Kohn, 2004).

Authors

• Christine Elaine Ashby, Syracuse University

• Carrie E Rood, Syracuse University