Dyslexia as Disability The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Threlkeld, Aubry D. 2015. Dyslexia as Disability. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:16461049 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Dyslexia as Disability Ad hoc Committee Members: Dr. Catherine Snow Dr. Helen Haste Dr. Jennifer Thomson Dissertation Thesis Submitted by Aubry D. Threlkeld on May 11, 2015 DYSLEXIA AS DISABILITY ii Acknowledgements In the last eight years many people have been influential to my work at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I would like to thank Professors Catherine Snow, Helen Haste, and Jennifer Thomson for their feedback, guidance and support through both the qualifying and dissertation phases of my work. All have taken time over many years to offer their professional opinions and to keep my work meaningful for both my intended audiences and myself. Colleagues and mentors like Professors David Connor at CUNY and Janet Sauer at Lesley University kindly answered naïve questions and provided companionship and critical feedback at important junctures. They have been my mentors in disability studies in education along with Dr. Bernadette McCartney, Dr. Chris MacMaster, Annie Guerin, and Dr. Roger Slee. I would also like to thank Dr. Celeste Moreno Palmero for her particular insights into conducting analyses of conceptual metaphors. I appreciate the colleagues and writing partners that encouraged me to approach my work critically and aided in basic editing: Dr. Marcia Russell, Dr. Adrienne Mundy-Shepherd, Meghan Lockwood, Maleka Gramling, and Professors Michael Bronski, Linda Schlossberg, and Caroline Light. I would like to thank my family for supporting me emotionally and physically: Sarah Pieplow, Randy Betts, Ramona Smith, Boris Vanderbilt-Threlkeld and Hugh Threlkeld. This work would not have been possible without their time, attention, and love. I thank the online communities of Teaching Disability Studies organized by Dr. Beth Haller and Disability Thank You Notes for reminding me I am not alone, my work matters and it is okay to be angry. DYSLEXIA AS DISABILITY iii Abstract These three qualitative studies describe and analyze how and when young dyslexic people manage disability labels in talk. The theoretical framework informing this study includes post-structuralist approaches to analyzing talk about disability (Tremain, 2002, 2006; Goodley, 2011) and on-going debates about using discourses to model the relationship between impairment, disability and culture inside and outside social model of disability (Hughes & Paterson, 1997; Corker, 1998; Allan, 1999; Shakespeare, 2000; Corker & Shakespeare, 2002; Grue, 2011) and resistance against ableism generally (Gabel & Peters, 2004). The research design involved semi-structured interviews of twenty-six students with dyslexia (Seidman, 2006) who attended a specialized high school and a review of three documentary films. The three articles detail different approaches to the same phenomenon of navigating and describing dyslexia. The first article engages a primary analysis of how new discourses of the gifted dyslexic brain include persisting notions of a broken brain using Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) in educational documentary film. The second study reframes existing studies of conceptual metaphor among dyslexics moving discussion beyond dyslexia as a barrier to a dynamic range of metaphors including dyslexia as a journey, puzzle and even as existence. Contemporary studies of conceptual metaphor and disability continue to reveal how disabled students navigate the differences between impairment and disability. The third article relates long-standing theories of learning differences to the lack of claiming disability among dyslexic students. By exploring passing as able-bodied as a phenomenon, I theorize how schools, even specialized settings, as ableist institutions oppress, silence and foreclose the possibilities of group identity. This research contributes to discursive approaches to understanding dyslexia as disability and connects disabled identities in talk to work with dyslexic students in schools. Suggestions for future research include understanding neurodiversity movements in relationship to learning disabilities, continuing to examine conceptual metaphor use among dyslexics to build out a typology and the political and economic roots of the discourses of learning differently. DYSLEXIA AS DISABILITY iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... ii Abstract .............................................................................................................................................. iii Disability Studies in Education ..................................................................................................... 1 Models of Disability ........................................................................................................................................ 2 Medical Model ................................................................................................................................................... 3 Social Model ....................................................................................................................................................... 4 Minority Model ................................................................................................................................................. 7 Charity Model .................................................................................................................................................... 8 Gap Model ........................................................................................................................................................... 9 Subject Positions within Disability Models .......................................................................................... 9 The Case for Dyslexia as Disability ....................................................................................................... 13 How this Dissertation is Organized ...................................................................................................... 19 Chapter 1: A Discursive Approach to Disability ................................................................... 22 Understanding Discourse and Relevant Terminology ................................................................. 23 A Theoretical Model for the Relationship Between Culture and Cultural Discourses .... 26 Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) ............................................................................................... 30 Elaborating on Subject Positions and Positioning ......................................................................... 32 Conceptual Metaphor ................................................................................................................................. 33 Discursive Approaches to Disability .................................................................................................... 35 Results of a Pilot Investigation: Dyslexia on YouTube™ .............................................................. 37 Research Questions ..................................................................................................................................... 42 Study Design ................................................................................................................................................... 43 Interviews and Focus Groups .................................................................................................................. 45 Data Analytic Approach and Strategies .............................................................................................. 45 Limitations and Threats to Validity ...................................................................................................... 47 Chapter 2: A Conversation with Educational Documentary Film: Theorizing Contemporary Dyslexic Subjectivity ....................................................................................... 50 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 50 Features of Educational Documentary Film on Dyslexia ............................................................ 51 Summary of The Big Picture ..................................................................................................................... 53 Discursive Construction: Dyslexia ......................................................................................................... 54 Discourses: Dyslexia as Disability and Gift ........................................................................................ 56 Action Orientation: Having vs. Being Dyslexic ................................................................................. 60 Positioning and Practice: Framing Heterogeneity and Dividing Subjects ........................... 63 Subjectivity: