The Reflected-Self Identity of Adolescents with Learning Disabilities: Perceptions of I Am Using Symbolic Interaction Theory

Authors

  • Jennifer O. Krutilla
  • D.E. Benson

Abstract

Combining special education constructs and Symbolic Interaction Theory from sociology, fifteen adolescents, who had been diagnosed by the public school system with Specific Leaming Disabilities, were studied in the natural setting of their public school environment. A qualitative-ethnographic research design captured and illuminated the elliptical reflections that adolescents with learning disabilities perceived from their significant others (teachers, administrators, peers, and parents) in their socially constructed reality-public school. I am became the self-perception obtained through the process of reading verbal and nonverbal symbolic language and behavior; a methodology used to formulate a composite of self-identity.

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Section

Articles