| In scholarly literature, narratives about Asperger Syndrome (AS) with particular regard to schooling overwhelmingly rally around the social, communicative, and emotional deficits that students so labeled supposedly experience. It is rare, in this realm, to encounter narratives that position these students as competent and able. Likewise, the perspectives of students labeled with AS are typically absent in academic literature, despite acknowledgments that their perspectives hold value for enriching and strengthening the quality of their experiences in school.;In response to these issues, this interpretivist study engages a Disability Studies (DS) perspective and employs qualitative methods to gauge the perspectives of three high school students labeled with AS. Specifically, the study addresses participants' interpretations of issues that bear meaning to their lives and identities as adolescent students. In the process, the study highlights instances wherein students' actions, insights, and other forms of representation constitute "counter narratives" to common, dominant, or "majoritarian" narratives that are prevalent in scholarly literature and reified in classrooms and schools. In highlighting counter narratives, the study aims to broaden essentialist and simplistic deficit-based conceptions about what it "means" to be a student labeled with AS. Features that the participants collectively represented as significant and meaningful to their school experiences reflect ideas that are commonly discussed in literature on general education, such as engaging struggle as a way to foster growth beyond one's current capacities and employing a variety of participatory structures and modalities in the process of learning. Implications for these meanings include cultivating three points of educational practice that support students' meaningful, equitable engagement in school: (a) promoting educational democracy; (b) assuming the role of researcher/ongoing data collector; and (c) differentiating instruction. Implications for further research include co-authoring scholarly work with individuals labeled with AS. |
