Views and experiences of general education kindergarten teachers about diagnosing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity “Disorder”
Over the past few years, the diagnostic rates of ADHD have risen dramatically, while causation and effective treatments are still to be accurately determined. As a result, the scientific interest in the matter from the fields of psychiatry, psychology, sociology and education has been constantly rising. The present thesis focuses on the educational view and more specifically on the complicated relationship between education and ADHD as indicated in the bibliography. Also, in the literature review a new role of the educators becomes evident; the one where they diagnose the disorder. This research aims to study the views of the pre-school teachers on ADHD: how they define it, how they locate it, how they refer the students to the specialists to get the formal diagnosis and what ADHD means for the students, their families and their educational path. For this purpose, semi-stuctured interviews took place with 7 kindergarten teachers of general education that where later analyzed with thematic analysis. In particular, the analysis of the recorded opinions of the educators was for the most part based theoretically upon the relationship that exists between power and knowledge and the social construction of the concepts of normal and pathological. The main conclusions revealed that the biomedical model as far as ADHD is considered is dominating the discourse showing hyperactivity and attention deficits as the main symptoms while projecting on the other side the normal student that is not annoying. ADHD as a pathology is considered to be a negative characteristic, it results on low educational expectations for succeeding in school and any educational improvement requires special educational support. Taking all these into account it makes sense that the families perceive the diagnosis as a personal tragedy. On the other hand, general education avoids the responsibility of educating these students and transfers it to special education, ignoring the dysfunctions of the educational processes that dispute the educational needs of these children.