Classroom Discourse and Disability: Interactional Opportunities for Development of Self-Determination Beliefs

• In Event: Fostering Self-Determination, Self-Regulation, and Self-Efficacy in Inclusive Settings

Abstract

This study illustrates how teachers’ interactive choices can provide crucial opportunities for high school students with disabilities to develop feelings of self-determination. Classroom video data, collected throughout a writing assignment, were analyzed using discourse analysis, focusing on how student and teacher used linguistic resources (e.g., personal pronouns & modal verbs), as well as how they co-constructed the learning context. Findings enabled greater understanding of ways in which participants negotiated issues of power, role and responsibility over the course of the project. The relationships built in this special education learning environment supported the focus student in seeing learning supports as acceptable, useful and desirable, and allowed opportunities to develop the self-regulatory skills and feelings of relatedness critical to strong self-determination beliefs.

Authors

• Rebecca Louick, Eastern Michigan University

• Min Wang, Wenzhou-Kean University