Care-less spaces and identity construction: transition to secondary school for disabled children

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature which marks out a feminist ethics of care and it is within this framework we understand transitions from primary to secondary school education can be challenging and care-less, especially for disabled children. By exploring the narratives of parents and professionals we investigate transitions and self-identity, as a meaningful transition depends on the care-full spaces pupils inhabit. These education narratives are all in the context of privileging academic attainment and a culture of testing and examinations. Parents and professionals, as well as children are also surveyed. Until there are care-full education processes, marginalisation will remain, impacting on disabled children's transition to secondary school and healthy identity construction. Moreover, if educational challenges are not addressed, their life chances are increasingly limited. Interdependent caring work enables engagement in a meaningful education and positive identity formation. In school and at home, care-full spaces are key in this process.

Care-full pedagogy: Conceptualizing feminist care ethics as an overarching critical framework to interrupt the dominance of developmentalism within post-secondary early childhood education programs

“…We suggest that a care-full pedagogical approach in post-secondary ECE programs is one way of bridging the chronic gaps between pedagogical theory, policy, and the material and political realities of educators', and children's and families', lives. Preliminary research in other fieldsfor example, youth with disabilities transitioning from primary to secondary school education (Lithari and Rogers, 2017) inspires hope that a pedagogy rooted in FCE may be a promising path forwards.…”

Beyond tick-box transitions? Experiences of autistic students moving from special to further education

“…Indeed, Hume et al (2014, 110) argue that 'the challenges and difficulties of many adolescents with autism in becoming independent is nearly as much of a marker of autism as is the more traditional diagnostic markers of social competence, communication and repetitive behavior'. Normative expectations of adolescence and independence by educational institutions can marginalise the lived experiences of autistic adolescents with parents seen both as critical to support positive transitions (Lithari and Rogers 2017) but also as over-anxious and inhibiting progress towards independence (Hume et al 2014). Gale and Parker (2014), argue that there needs to be a greater focus on transition as becoming as there is too little recognition of the fluidity, fragmentation and precarity of transition as an ongoing process and experience.…”

Just mothers: criminal justice, care ethics and ‘disabled’ offenders

“…Significantly for this paper, home, school and prison life are influenced by the macro and micro politics of bureaucratic systems, which are increasingly restrictive and bounded and do not promote caring relations, thereby creating care-less spaces (Lithari andRogers 2017, Rogers 2018). Education is notably failing disadvantaged young people (Rogers 2019, Gillies 2016, Johnston and Bradford 2019) and prisoner's families are cumulatively deprived of support .…”