Becoming an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Child: Disability and Early Schooling in the Era of Accountability

• In Event: Roundtable Session 54
  In Roundtable Session: Understanding the Construction of the Dis/abled Child Through Literacy, Literature, and Schooling: Critiques and Ways Forward

Abstract

Drawing on a longitudinal ethnographic study on very young children considered at-risk of being diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, this paper examines how those children are identified by Pre-kindergarten and Kindergarten teachers at the beginning of schooling. The findings revealed that those children were discursively constructed as someone who lacked attention to instruction and body control, who needed discipline and retention due to immaturity, and who was at great risk of academic failure. Utilizing Mauss’s (1935/1973) techniques of the body, Foucault’s (1977) docile body, and Bakhtin’s (1968) carnivalesque, I discuss how the teachers’ identification and construction of an ADHD child reflects disembodiment in teaching and learning promoted in the era of accountability.

Author

• Kyung Hwa Lee, University of Georgia