Re-Framing the Master Narratives of Learning Dis/Abilities through an Emotion and Intersectional Lens

• In Event: Disability Justice in (Special) Education Futures: Exploring Critical, Intersectional, and Social and Emotional Dimensions

Abstract

In this conceptual framework paper, I critically chronicle the historiography, policy, and scientific literatures of learning disabilities (ld) and provide a conceptual framework for reframing these as master narratives. I defined master narratives as the pre-existent sociocultural forms of interpretation. I interrogated the a) cultural-historical; b) the federal definition of ld within idea, c) the educational-professional academic and focused on, the d) social and emotional literature of ld. The master narratives from these literatures included: a) ld as a boy who struggles with reading, ld as a symbolic complex, and the legacy of the term “feebleminded”, d) assumptions about learning, ab/normality, difference, communication, dis/ability, culture and diversity, and issues of representation of student voice, e) a medical-psychological deficit oriented neurological, cognitive and instructional master narratives that assume dis/Ability within their neurology. These framings ignore the intersectional discursive, emotive and cultural-historical material contexts of students’ lived experiences.

Author

• David I. Hernandez-Saca, University of Northern Iowa