Beyond visions of repair: Evoking a parlance of capacity and competence in research on asperger syndrome and schooling

Abstract

In my doctoral research, I focused on the school experiences of students labeled with Asperger syndrome (AS), the meanings they attributed to those experiences, and the ways in which their conceptions of AS converged with or diverged from common conceptions of the classification. In this chapter, I consider possibilities for research to illuminate students’ capabilities and competencies at a moment in history when scholarly work at the intersection of AS and schooling generally focuses on the deficits these students supposedly represent. In doing so, I articulate the dominant narratives that surfaced in a textual analysis of scholarship on AS and schooling. I further share some of the ways in which insights and actions of two of the study’s participants, encountered over six months of spending time with them in their schools, work to complicate notions inherent to these narratives. Invoking history to gauge the earliest voice on the topic of AS, and crucially, adopting a disability studies (DS) stance within the research provide further opportunities for engaging a perspective of capacity. Each of these qualities plays a role in aiding the field’s stride forward toward interpretations of AS that are dynamic, rich, and complex.