ADHD medication and social self-understanding

Abstract

This paper addresses some of the contradictions, dilemmas, and struggles in a Danish primary school practice involved in medicating children diagnosed with ADHD. It draws on a social practice research study of a 7-year-old boy diagnosed with ADHD, who was medicated against his will. It focuses on his struggles when being medicated, and particularly on meaning making processes and changes in social self-understandings in the first grade class, 1B, generated among students, teachers, and parents. The paper is an analysis of moments and movements in Dennis’ social self-understanding generated as part of a social practice research project combining a variety of methods, ranging from collective biography inspired group work and qualitative interviews with teachers and students, photo-based interviews, and participant observation in the school. The study has a double aim of generating theory regarding social self-understanding and ADHD medication, and analyzing concrete contradictions, dilemmas, and action possibilities in a primary school, enabling new “practice recognitions” that (at least partly) move beyond practices that generate marginalized social self-understandings.