What is it about?
This article deals with problems of stigmatization of children with diagnoses like ADHD and ASD within main stream education. When teachers, educational- and social workers are confronted with children with these diagnoses, there are two dominating but opposing views from which they can take outset. One view urges professionals to consider the diagnoses as pointing to mental disabilites, the other view takes critical stance towards diagnoses as means of stigmatization. Therefore, professionals are seemingly offered contraditory perspectives when dealing with children with these diagnoses. The article offers theoretical tools aimed at turning the theoretical problems of these opposing stands into questions to be dealt with in the course of educational practise.
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Why is it important?
An increasing amount of children are diagnosed with ADHD and ASD worldwide. Professionals like teacher, education- and social workers are confronted with these children in the course of practise without training or means to deal with the problems arising in practise. It is important that these professionals are not working on basis of contradictory prejudices about the children but with sensitivity to the specific child in question and in ways that make diagnoses informative and not obstructive.
Perspectives
By this article I want to contribute to the enhancement of professional’s sensitivity towards an increasing vulnerable group of children diagnosed with ADHD and ASD, who are at the risk of exclusion from the rest of society for various reasons. My aim is to show what can be learned from theoretical debates with regard to the course taken in educational practise.
Henrik Skovlund
Aarhus Universitet
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder diagnoses as ideal types: A reinterpretation of stigma within the context of mainstream education, Theory and Research in Education, March 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1477878519833747.
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