A continuum deconstructed: Exploring how day-care staff’s discursive practices construct children as possibly impaired

Abstract

Based on interviews and fieldwork in Norwegian day-care institutions, I examine day-care staffs’ descriptions of children suspected of, but not (yet) diagnosed as, having impairments. The main research question is: how do children become constructed as possibly impaired and positioned outside the realm of a perceived normality in Norwegian day-care centres? Understanding impairment as discursively constructed, I explore how day-care staffs’ portrayals of three young boys construct them as deviant and possibly impaired by drawing on cultural values and ideas about children and childhood. I use a continuum concept (Davis 1995) to visualize and conceptualise the fluid and blurry areas between the binaries, disabled/non-disabled and normal/abnormal, and explore how day-care staffs’ statements deconstruct or cut-off the continuum, thus, (re)produce categories and position some children as deviating from what is perceived and accepted as normal.