Exploring Shared Excitement: A Case Study of Participation in Interaction Between Staff and Residents with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

This paper explores the participation of residents with intellectual disabilities in their encounters with staff by focusing on the relationship between residents' engagement in activities and the occurrence of shared excitement that is a collective arousal establishing solidarity. The methods used included participant observations and interviews with eight residents and 12 staff at two Danish residential services. The findings illustrate how shared excitement is produced through the establishment of mutual focus on a familiar symbol, shared feelings, and synchronisation of speech, gazes, and bodily movements in resident-staff interactions. The potential of evoking interactional synchrony is related to the residents' familiarity with the symbol used in the activity and to the encounter between resident abilities to engage and staff support. The findings suggest that interactions producing shared excitement can foster residents' participation, a crucial concept in Scandinavian disability policies.

Exploring Narrative Competence of Persons with Severe Intellectual Disabilities: Insights from Complementary Inclusive Analytic Frameworks

“…The sense of excitement is what Hymes (1994, 331) has called the "arc of expectation" generated through the patterning of the story as well as its structural organisation around a climax, and it has been identified by Røgeskov (2019) as a key factor in active engagement and participation between tenants and staff-produced through mutual focus, gaze, speech, and synchronic communication.…”

At lytte på baggrunde i pædagogiske situationer

“…Deltagelse forbindes med social inklusion (Sand Jørgensen 2021, Bigby m.fl 2018), med medborgerskab og inddragelse (Askheim 2020), selvbestemmelse og beslutningstagning (Talman mf.fl ., 2021). Det forbindes også med social deltagelse, interaktioner og tilhørsforhold (Røgeskov 2018, Witsø m.fl . 2018.…”