Former Students, Current Parents: Exploring Identity Sensemaking Processes in Special Education

• In Event: Cripping and Queering Advocacy and Experience

Abstract

This qualitative study explored how former special education students now parenting children in special education make sense of their identities within the social context of "being in" special education. Using discursive (Gee, 2000) and narrative practices (Bamberg, 2004; De Fina, 2013; Giaxplou & Georgakopolou, 2021), this research investigated through online group Story Circles and individual interviews how 5 "former students/current parents" navigate socio-historical messages connected to disability, divergence, and difference. This study places former special education student perspectives at the center of the inquiry. This focus on the lived experiences of the narrators who shared their stories and talk about their experiences recognized and positioned these participants' dynamic processes of identity sensemaking as "the consequence and vehicle for vulnerability" (Crenshaw, 2016).

Author

• Tracey Kenyon Milarsky, University of Missouri