Relationship Fatigue: A Postcritical Ethnography Exploring Relationships Between Students With Severe Disabilities and Their Teachers

• In Event: 21.062 - MTCC Roundtable Session Six
  In Roundtable Session: 21.062-5 - "Nothing About Us Without Us": Asserting Agency, Voice, and Relationships With Nonspeaking and Neurodivergent Students

Abstract

Student-Teacher relationships are vital to the well-being and learning of students with severe disabilities. This postcritical ethnography explores students with disabilities’ relationships with their teacher within a special education classroom setting. Results from the study show that students exhibited relationship fatigue, as exhibited by resistance to the highly structured classroom curriculum. It was also found that teachers viewed student bids for communication as a disruption to the classroom curriculum. Findings call for researchers and teachers to work to orient themselves toward the child and consider issues of representation in qualitative research.

Authors

• Charna D'Ardenne, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

• Karen Erickson, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill