Constructing and Maintaining Disability (Paperback)

Constructing and Maintaining Disability. For parents of children with neurological motor disorders, there is controversy over selecting the most appropriate or preferred school. Problems arise when an alternative pedagogy, Conductive Education, is preferred for their child. This book presents a social constructionist critique of the discourses that pervade the world of administrators who manage access to special education resources. A constructionist grounded theory shows how administrators succeed in perpetuating children's educational and psychological disabilities through a variety of discursive methods, whilst a Foucauldian discourse analysis shows how administrators adhere to the professionalism of contemporary practice in order to strengthen their arguments within decision- making, thereby ignoring the disciplinary and regulatory practices they enact. Enmeshed in a panoptic system of power, discipline, and surveillance, they are so positioned as to discourage proper and absolute parental choice - and so it is why conductive education may be denied.