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Abstract
A study in an Australian university investigated 150 pre-service teachers’ responses to and participation in discourses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Interesting data surfaced around the notion of ‘labelling’ children with ADHD. It seemed that the pre-service teachers did not believe ‘ADHD’ to be a label. Whilst the literature reviewed acknowledged diagnosing a child with ADHD to be tantamount to labelling (that is, ‘ADHD’ is a medical diagnostic label), the pre-service teachers in this study differentiated diagnosis from labelling and cast labelling as occurring in the classroom sometime pre- or post- diagnosis. Speaking of diagnosis and labelling in this way re-defines an object of dominant labelling discourse: ‘doctor as labeller’ is replaced with notions of ‘teacher as labeller’. Using Foucault’s ‘rules of discursive formations’ to frame its analysis, this study pondered the pre-service teachers’ conceptions of labelling and in doing so revealed a ‘teacher as labeller’ discursive formation. This article provides examples of how this discursive formation features in pre-service teachers’ talk and outlines an important implication of the ‘teacher as labeller’ discursive formation, namely that it enables teachers to cement their role in the ADHD medical diagnostic apparatus.
Acknowledgements
As the findings presented in this article are from my honours project, I would like to acknowledge my supervisor, Dr Valerie Harwood (University of Wollongong, Australia) and my markers, Professor Jan Wright (University of Wollongong, Australia) and Associate Professor Lisette Burrows (University of Otago, New Zealand), for their valuable feedback on my research and manuscript. Many thanks to my reviewers for asking the pertinent questions that inspired a significant ‘re-write’ of this article. Particularly, thank you to my reviewers for encouraging me to explicate my use of Foucault’s work and for guiding my use of Foucauldian terms.
Notes
The reviewers for this article rightly noted that lack of discussion in this article dedicated to destabilising the pathology of ADHD might be construed by the reader as giving credence to the existence of an unproblematic diagnosis. This could not be further from my intent. My own standpoint on ADHD is a critical, sociocultural one and I am an advocate for multiple perspectives in teachers’ epistemology. I found the homogeneity and lack of debate in the participants’ knowledge of ADHD alarming. In recent years the aetiology and psychopathology of ADHD has been debated across popular media and academic literature, within and between bio-medical, biopsychosocial and sociocultural perspectives. Representing these debates fairly is an undertaking that I attempted in Chapter 3 of my thesis (McMahon Citation2007), and destabilising the psychopathology of ADHD is a task that has been undertaken elsewhere (e.g. Adams Citation2008; Graham Citation2006a, Citation2006b, Citation2007a, Citation2007b, Citation2008; Graham and Armstrong Citation2008; Harwood Citation2006; Ideus Citation1994; Laurence Citation2008; Laurence and McCallum Citation1998; Prosser Citation2008; Prosser et al. Citation2002; Tait Citation2003, Citation2005). Unfortunately, these are discussions that are too expansive for this article to accommodate.
Thank you to one of my reviewers for reminding me that some readers may be hankering for statistics and asking questions of ‘validity’ when reporting findings from a study of 150 participants.
The addition sign ‘+’ in this quote reflects the notation of the questionnaire respondent. All formatting, use of symbols and spelling/grammar mistakes in questionnaire transcript excerpts are deliberate and mirror the inscriptions of the actual questionnaire response.
Whilst my honours thesis (see McMahon Citation2007) details multiple analyses of such ‘contradictory subjectivities’ (Kendall and Wickham Citation1999, 54), due to restrictions of space in this article I have drawn only on Zara’s interview transcript.
These excerpts from the focus group are presented in the order in which they were discussed.
These are two key documents guiding teacher education and teaching practice and certification in NSW, Australia. Although these texts are specific to the context of this study, that they are perceived to have such an impact on the pre-service teachers’ understandings of ‘labelling’ gives pause for thought for teacher educators. The influence that these documents had in this context is good warrant, I suggest, for considering the impact of teaching board requirements and guidelines in other jurisdictions both within Australia and internationally.