‘Short’ Stories of Young People with Restricted Growth of Their Schooling Experiences (Secondary Education) in the United Kingdom

This thesis examines the schooling experiences of young people (between the ages of eleven and thirty years old) with Restricted Growth in the United Kingdom. Previous research on this topic was conducted predominantly through medical and psychological lenses and proposed that such experiences were negative due to a range of deficits young people with RG presented, including cognitive, social and behavioural ones. Hence, young people with RG were depicted as tragic, passive figures, with the problem lying in their bodies. Taking a Critical Disability Studies (Goodley, 2013) and a Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies (Curran and Runswick-Cole, 2014) approach, this thesis provides an insight into their schooling experiences through an engagement with their perspectives, which problematise both this deficit discourse as the underlying reason for such experiences and their depiction as passive.

Twenty young people were recruited for this qualitative narrative research and became the storytellers of their schooling experiences, that is, they shared their stories in various forms and ways e.g. oral storytelling through narrative interviews in person/online and written storytelling via email interviews. These stories were then analysed through a narrative thematic analysis.

The findings illustrate different aspects of their schooling experiences. For instance, participants’ stories demonstrate how they navigated and experienced various disabling and ableist school spaces, such as school classrooms, playgrounds and toilets. Moreover, their stories shed light on their experiences with teaching assistants and their mixed feelings towards the support they were provided. Furthermore, their interactions with teachers and the latter’s disabling attitudes towards them are considered. Additionally, the various forms of violence -real, cultural, psycho-emotional and systemic- the participants en/countered at schools are captured.

The thesis closes with some recommendations, including for more attention to be paid on disabled young people’s insights into schooling and for educational practitioners to be more reflexive of their practice.