How can staff talk with each other about children who have problems ? : Conferences for therapeutic and educational programs

Abstract

The present study examined how therapy staff come to be able to communicate with each other in conferences about therapeutic and educational plans for children who have problems or disabilities. The research was especially based on the notion of transparency in "Legitimate Peripheral Participation" (LPP ; Lave & Wenger, 1991). The data came from observations of 9 conferences, a total of 14 hours. First, describing the children by using a "psychological language" (Mehan, 1993) enabled staff members to share the same idea or concept, whereas there was a possibility of restricting multiple ways to get access to the problems. Second, in describing the children's problems, differences in how staff members talked about the problems created conflict within the staff. Third, conflicts took place in the conferences when there was a gap between the staffs subjective impressions and the objective results from psychological tests. The author discusses the possibilities and limitations of legitimate peripheral participation as discourse theory.