A Discourse Analysis of Parents' and Teachers' Social Constructions of School Readiness and Transition to Kindergarten for Children With Disabilities

<p>This study examined parents’ and teachers’ social constructions of disability, school readiness, and the transition to kindergarten process for children with disabilities who participated in a self-contained preschool special education (SPED) class, called a special day class (SDC). The 12 participants included parents of children with disabilities (i.e., three with autism and one with Down syndrome), four preschool SDC teachers, two kindergarten SDC teachers, and two general education kindergarten teachers. They were recruited from a large urban school district in Southern California. Semistructured interviews were conducted to invite participants to share their experiences working with students with disabilities and their roles in these students’ transitions to kindergarten. A dialectical–relational approach to discourse analysis, with a focus on subject positioning, was applied when coding the interview transcripts for themes.</p> <p>Consistent with an ecological framework of school transition (Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2000), themes in the transcripts identified contextual factors that influenced the early school experiences of students with disabilities. These factors included classroom structure, availability of resources for mainstreaming, and collaboration among parents and teachers. Participants also identified important child-focused factors, emphasizing social–emotional and behavioral skills over academic skills as important for school readiness.</p> <p>Parents’ and teachers’ accounts of their experiences in the transition process revealed their different roles and perceived levels of authority in the decision-making process (e.g., decisions to continue students’ placement in a SDC or transition into general education). The methodology and findings of this study added to the scant literature on school readiness among children with disabilities and had several implications for practice and future research.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education

Year

2023

Author dc:creator

• Senores Toyota, Ronica

Contributors dc:contributor

• Michael Hass
• Amy Ardell,
• Leigh Ann Tipton-Fisler

• school readiness
• transition to school
• special education
• disability
• social constructivism
• discourse analysis
• Early Childhood Education
• Educational Psychology
• School Psychology
• Special Education and Teaching

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/education_dissertations/61

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.chapman.edu:education_dissertations-1060