Peer reciprocity and friendship in the classroom: a disabled student's experience

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article draws on findings from an ethnographic case study based on the classroom experiences of a learning disabled student as he attended regular schools in New Zealand. The aim is to look at a disabled student’s friendships within his classroom experiences so as to see how peer interactions supported his learning. The research involved making regular visits to an eleven year-old’s classrooms while he was at a two-year middle school. The data, including observation notes and interview transcripts, was analysed using a sociocultural framework to demonstrate how friendship was embodied in patterns of reciprocal and intersubjective activity. This has implications for how we understand concepts like classroom culture and its influence on inclusion, where the literature has often been on teacher-student relationships rather than peer relationships. Lastly, it demonstrates the important role of ethnography in generating knowledge about classroom experience that would be difficult to establish using other methods.