Are students with hidden disabilities having their voices heard in education policy?
Written By: Author(s): Helen Ross
9 min read
For those with hidden or less clearly defined impairments, accessing decision-making is challenging
Prout’s (2000) ‘new paradigm’ of childhood began a quiet revolution in how young people were understood sociologically. They began to move from being constructed as unable to enact agency (Smith, 2007) and dependent on adults to facilitate their participation in society, towards being viewed as competent social agents, capable of fully engaging in society (Prout and James, 2002).
These two conceptualisations of children and young people met in Uprichard’s (2008) model of children as both ‘beings’ and ‘becomings’. ‘Beings’ are active social actors, able to enact their own agency and ‘becomings’ are individuals who are acted upon by social structures, lacking the capacity to enact their own agency.
In this article
This article explores how young people have been viewed within educational discourse, and how their position within literature has been adopted into, or rejected by, governmental discourses relating to education.
It is undertaken in a climate whe
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This article was published in April 2018 and reflects the terminology and understanding of research and evidence in use at the time. Some terms and conclusions may no longer align with current standards. We encourage readers to approach the content with an understanding of this context.
References
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