What teachers need to know about the struggle for self-determination (conscientization) and self-regulation: adults with disabilities speak about their education experiences

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to help teachers better understand the struggles that people with disabilities experience in attaining their educational goals and to encourage the development of teaching and learning strategies that help to respect and facilitate the struggle itself. The authors share the generative themes that emerged using a critical pedagogy approach (dialogic interviews) to elicit the voices of adults with disabilities speaking about their public school experiences. In discussing the implications for teachers, the authors show the intersections of educational psychology's concept self-regulation and critical pedagogy's concept conscientization and special education’ s concept self-determination. Why the ‘struggle’ itself is important (from the perspectives provided by conscientization, self-regulation, and self determination) is discussed. The major question is whether or not teachers can structure the awareness process that results in learners becoming aware enough to verbalize, “I have difficulties”. What do teachers do to stimulate the metacognitive thinking processes that makes it possible for students with disabilities to think, “I can monitor myself!”? How can teachers capture the power of the conscientization experience that leads students with disabilities to experience the generative will power “to use the powers that I have to make a difference in my life's situation?” How do adults with disabilities come to these kinds of awareness and how can teachers help facilitate the awareness?