working in the public and private domains: staff management of community activities for and the...

Journal of Intellectual Disability Research

pp – 600

Abstract

In addition to describing how the concept of stigmacontinues to be a pervasive influence in encountersbetween people with intellectual disability andothers, the present study suggests that themanagement of this situation has passed into thecontrol of care staff. An ethnographic study ofyoung adults and community relationships suggeststhat the activities of staff are crucial in shaping thesocial profile of people with intellectual disability.The views of care staff about the taken-for-grantedrights which characterize presence and participationin the community domain encourage them to adopta semi-insulation approach to their work. Staffextend this approach by adopting informationcontrol strategies to conceal important informationfrom students. The present author argues that thereis a need for on-going research into staff activity inthe community domain.

Keywords community activities, identity,intellectual disability, staff management

Introduction

The present paper examines the nature of the socialpresence and participation of people withintellectual disability in as much as these elementsof quality of life are organized for a group of olderstudents in a special school in the UK. There areseveral good reasons why such dual concerns mightbe considered important. A core objectiveunderlying service provision over recent years hasconcerned the integration of people withintellectual disability into their local communities.While such an objective is apparent across a rangeof service agencies, there exists a substantialresearch literature which points to a similarconclusion. While the exclusion of people withintellectual disability has relaxed to permit greatersocial presence, it continues to have an obduratefeature in that there is little evidence of moreintimate relationships with community members(Evans & Murcott ; Todd et al. ). AsMyers et al. (, p. ) pointed out: ‘despitebeing physically present in local communities,people with learning disabilities often remain,socially, outside looking in.’ The present paper seeksto look in detail at this issue through anexamination of the impact of stigma, and the rolewhich care staff play in managing the social

© Blackwell Science Ltd

Working in the public and private domains:staff management of community activities for and the identities of people with intellectual disability

S.Todd

Welsh Centre for Learning Disabilities: Applied Research Unit, Division of Psychological Medicine, University of Wales College ofMedicine, Cardiff, UK

Correspondence: Stuart Todd, Welsh Centre for Learning

Disabilities: Applied Research Unit, Division of Psychological

Medicine, University of Wales College of Medicine, Meridian

Court, North Road, Cardiff CF BL, UK.

E-mail: [email protected]

presence and participation of people withintellectual disability in public places. In any studyof the social lives of people with intellectualdisability, the issue of stigma will loom large, as itdoes for many other groups of marginalized people(e.g. see Davis ; Scambler & Hopkins ;Alonzo & Reynolds ; Carricaburu & Pierret). In addition, the work of staff has beenviewed as a significant factor in providing peoplewith intellectual disability with a social presence(Evans et al. ; Evans & Murcott ; Toddet al. ; Grant et al. ; Ramcharan et al.), but little research on their work in thisdomain exists.

Within the field of intellectual disability,Edgerton’s () study of life beyond theinstitution captured the symbolic significance ofintellectual disability in everyday life, and thedifficulties and apprehension it presented forindividuals in social interactions. So awful was thelabel ‘mental retardation’, that the participants inthe above study felt compelled to practice deceptionand to construct fabricated biographies in an effortto render it hidden from most people (Edgerton). They had a keenly developed sense of ‘feltstigma’ (Scambler & Hopkins ) whichpredisposed them to managing a fairly isolatedlifestyle. Such research findings suggest that, despitethe romanticized and benign view of public places,these are not without their social controlmechanisms (Lofland ), and for stigmatisedgroups in particular, these can represent apotentially hostile space, predisposing individualstowards invisibility as a strategy to avoid negativeand potentially humiliating interactions (Gardener). Nevertheless, the thrust of much serviceideology in recent years has been to fragment thisveil of inconspicuousness and to raise the publicprofile of people with intellectual disability.

The social lives of people with intellectualdisability have altered considerably, but there hasbeen a lack of detailed research on how theexperience of public places has altered over thedecades since Edgerton’s () study. Relativelylittle is known about the nature and structure ofeveryday encounters in the public domain, and howpeople with intellectual disability deal with thepotential difficulties and opportunities which facethem there. In addition, unlike the participants in

Edgerton’s ) study, people with intellectualdisability do not typically act alone in the publicsphere, but are more likely to access public placesin the company of intimates, most often familymembers or staff (Ramcharan et al. ; Toddet al. ). Few data exist on the roles played byintimates in such settings. Therefore, the presentpaper focuses upon the themes of stigma and self-identity, and the role of staff in managing oroverseeing the social lives of a group of studentswith intellectual disability.

Self-identity and social interaction

The special school provides a useful setting toexplore and analyse how intellectual disability isshaped and given meaning as a social identity sinceit has been identified as a setting within whichyoung people with intellectual disability acquire anacute sense of themselves as negatively differentfrom others. Thus, becoming a pupil in a specialschool can be seen as involving not only a processof categorization, but also of learning, i.e. acquiringa special world view and a distinctive self-image(e.g. see Rock ). To be selected for a specialschool has been taken to involve not only receivinga form of special education, but also with beingintroduced and socialized into a special anddevalued identity and career (Thomas ;Tomlinson ). It has been taken to represent a‘passport’ to a devalued lifestyle (e.g. see Jupp). The fundamental lesson of special schoolinghas been viewed thus:

‘Children with disabilities who go to specialschools . . . will learn that the world of themajority is not for them, that they are special andseparate, that they are supposed to have more incommon with children who share their disabilitythan with others.’ (Shearer , p. )

The notion that special educational practices leadto a transformation of identity and career have beencentral concerns in the emerging sociologicalcritique of special education (Barton & Tomlinson; Tomlinson ; Barton ; Quicke ;Soder ). For the most part, the focus has beenon its gate-keeping functions, i.e. identifying thetypes of children who are most likely to enter thesystem, but a detailed examination of the processes


S. Todd • Working in the public and private domains601

© Blackwell Science Ltd, Journal of Intellectual Disability Research , –

which succeed the stages of categorization and theexperiences of those who are processed through thespecial education system has been conspicuous byits absence has been. However, Meldicot (;p. ) found that pupils enjoyed their time inspecial school, but were aware of its stigma andhesitant over the meaning it had for others:

‘But the boys themselves clearly do feel different,“We ask our teachers not to put down theschool’s name when we go on visits”, and onetold me, and a whole classful agreed, that whilethey liked the school, they wouldn’t actually tellanyone they went there.’

Such views suggest that students will have to dealwith the stigma of intellectual disability and that, asfor other stigmatized groups, public spaces arelikely to be difficult (Gardener ). The presentpaper seeks to add to this small literature byfocusing upon a distinctive juncture in the lives andcareers of children in special schools, namely theperiod immediately preceding school leaving. Sucha focus appears useful in that this is likely to be ananticipatory or transitional period when studentsmay be less concerned with managing their time inschool, and more immediately concerned about theimplications which being disabled will have for theirexperiences and participation in the world beyond.Furthermore, one might reasonably expect that aheightened sense of awareness and reflectionconcerning one’s self-identity would be prominentfeatures of their day-to-day lives. Indeed, it isduring these years that students may become awareof the social nature of their status for the first time.Categorizing a child as having ‘special educationalneeds’ may mark the beginning of a new formalcareer in a particular role, but it will certainly besucceeded by a protracted process of socialization.Given the age at which people with intellectualdisability are labelled, many will begin their specialschool careers at the ‘pre-stigma’ stage (Alonzo &Reynolds , p. ). Thus, it may be some timeafter their labelling or their entry into a specialschool that children make such discoveries.Goffman () argued that it is when childrenattend school, or some time shortly after, that the‘protective cocoon’ parents have designed tomaintain their child’s ‘initial innocence’ (Davis, p. ) is likely to be violated and shattered.

The school leaving years may, perhaps, present atime when special school students will come face toface with the wider social meanings of intellectualdisability.

Role of staff in public spaces

As well as examining the extent to which the stigmaassociated with intellectual disability presents anobstacle to social participation, the present paperalso draws attention to the work of staff inorganizing and managing such situations. Toddet al. () described people with intellectualdisability as accessing a growing range of publicplaces, but often in the company of close intimates,i.e. relatives and/or paid carers. The work of carestaff has been seen as crucial in providing peoplewith intellectual disability a social presence (Evanset al. ; Evans & Murcott ; Todd et al.). Nevertheless, there is little research on thenature of the role staff play in facilitatingcommunity presence and participation, and theirpublic or social roles are surely worthy of somestudy. However, two possible roles for the work ofstaff in managing integrative practices can beconstructed. One possible role would involve staffworking in public places as a kind of ‘culturalbroker’ (e.g. see Weiss ). In this case, staffwould function as intermediaries facilitatingcontact, reducing tension, and building bridgesbetween people with intellectual disability andcolleagues. Such a role is no doubt implicit withinthe design and delivery of most services (e.g. seeEvans et al. ). Another role concerns the roleof intimates as ‘benefactors’ (Edgerton ), ‘thewise’ (Goffman ) or ‘stigma coaches’ (Scambler& Hopkins ). Such a role engages staff in a‘benevolent conspiracy’ (Edgerton , p. )whereby they support or coach individuals in theart of concealment. This acknowledges the power ofstigma, but limits its realization, thereby easinginteraction in public places. For the most part, it isbased upon maintaining a strategy of‘nondisclosure’ of a stigmatized identity to others.

Therefore, the present article examines staffactivity in public places and the extent to whichthis facilitates or obstructs the social participationof people with intellectual disability. It can also beconsidered a study of the impact which stigma has



© Blackwell Science Ltd, Journal of Intellectual Disability Research , –6

upon the nature of social interaction and the self-identities of people with intellectual disability. Thedata reported in the present study derive from anethnographic study of special school life, i.e. anapproach involving participant observation and in-depth interviewing. Data are presented below onthe self-identities of students, staff views on stigmaand the nature of the world outside of school, andstaff work in providing coping mechanisms forstudents.

Subjects and methods

Research setting

The present study was conducted within AftonLodge special school for children with severeintellectual disability. The school and its location, aswell as staff and students, have been attributedpseudonyms to protect confidentiality. Fieldworkfor the study took place at intervals over a -yearduration. Over this period of time, the presentauthor sampled across the range of school activities,taking part in classroom and extramural activities.Afton Lodge had pupils with severe intellectualdisability and was the largest of three such schoolswithin the county of Kinraddie. The school wasmixed sex, with students ranging in age between and years. There were classes within theschool, and each class was managed by a teacherand nursery nurse and/or classroom aide. Theclasses were arranged by a combination of and levelof ability. However, the data were drawn largelyfrom observational fieldwork centring on Afton’sOutreach Unit. This unit worked specifically with students from three classes who had passed orwere approaching the official school leaving age, i.e. years of age. The pupils were taught separatelyfrom the rest of school, and lunched and mixedtogether away from the rest of the school.

The Outreach Unit, while formally including allsuch students, tended, for all practical purposes, toexclude one class of students with profound andcomplex disabilities, the ‘senior special needs’ class.This class tended to be isolated from the day-to-dayconcerns of the Outreach Unit, concerns whichfocused on preparing children for post-school life.The students in this isolated class seldom mixedwith the other outreach students at any time of the

school day. Their outreach place was taken by aclass of children aged between and years.These three outreach classes were based within aseparate section of the school and were more-or-less a self-contained unit within Afton Lodge. Eachof the three classes had a dedicated teacher, andnursery nurse or classroom assistant, althoughstudents and staff would be allocated according toactivity at different times of the school day. Eachday of the week, the group left school under thesupervision of school staff, and using school orpublic transport, visited town, places of interest orsports’ facilities, or attended a day’s course at alocal college. The pupils also followed a school-based curriculum, the core of which was made upof lessons organized around a Personal Health andSocial Relationships component. The students inthis group tended to be more able than other pupilsin the school. The majority of students wereambulatory, and had good self-help andcommunication skills. Although this group was seenas representative in terms of the school’s paststudents, the school having opened as an ESN(S)school, it was also recognized that an increasingproportion of the school’s students were childrenwith profound and complex disabilities. Thus, stafffelt that, if the outreach students were entering theeducation system today, they would have been,perhaps, more likely to be placed within integratedsettings or at a school for children with less severeintellectual disability.

Research strategy

The problems of doing ethnography in schools havebeen well identified in a substantial body ofliterature (Burgess ; Delamont ). Onecommon theme emerging from this previous workis that the narrow range of age roles availablewithin schools implies that the researcher will haveto obtain data through observation rather thanparticipation (Corrigan ; Delamont ;Woods ). However, during his time in AftonLodge, the present author observed andparticipated in many aspects of school life. Hisability to develop a more active research role wasattributable to a number of factors. Classrooms inAfton Lodge not only contained a teacher, but alsoa nursery nurse, and this blurred the division of




classroom labour (Todd ) and created anopportunity for the author to become involved inclassroom activities, often as ‘an extra pair ofhands’. In addition, there was a tendency within theschool to view the curriculum as consisting ofeveryday or low-status knowledge which mostadults possessed. Therefore, the present author wasasked on a number of occasions to ‘take classes’.However, the role in which he was seemingly castby staff posed problems in developing relationshipswith and gaining the trust of students, since itinvolved supervisory tasks, a role unlikely topromote trust (Mandell ). In addition, thepresent author was occasionally used by staff as aninstrument of control. For example, during his firstweeks of fieldwork in school, one pupil who wasreluctant to do as she was told was warned:

‘Look, if you don’t do it, Stuart will write itdown in his book. Do you want him to write howbad you’ve been?’

Developing relationships with students in theschool were also hindered by the few opportunitieswhich they had to be without supervision. Duringschool breaks and lunch time, students remained intheir classrooms or used the school hall for lunch.However, during lunch time, students in theOutreach Unit used the ‘common room’, a smallconverted classroom with easy chairs, a bed andgames. The present author was often left on‘supervision duties’ with students there, a rolewhich he was able to corrupt by joining in theiractivities, and talking with them about school andtheir lives. The author used whatever time he couldto provide an account of his research and toreassure the pupils that he was not writing abouttheir ‘bad behaviour’. He took care also to adoptHargreaves’ () strategy of temporary andconvenient blindness and deafness so as to avoidstudents identifying me too quickly as anothermember of staff. The present author alsovolunteered to take part in activities with studentswhich gave him more opportunity to get to knowthem without the presence of other school staff. Forexample, he spent a morning with a group ofstudents washing staff cars and spent a week withsome of them on a school holiday. While thepresent author does not claim that he completelyovercame the problems of being cast in an adult

role, he felt that his relationships with students inthe school were moderately decent and that he hadgained their trust. Towards the end of his first yearof fieldwork, he was asked to have a meeting with ateacher who was keen to discuss the work of herclass over the school year. She prefaced her requestwith a recognition that the present author probablyhad developed closer relationships with the studentsin her class than she had. Like other schoolethnographers (e.g. Measor & Woods , p. ),staff recognized that the present author had had‘extraordinary privileged access’.

Results and discussion

Stigma: a pervasive, limiting and daunting influence

In this section of the present paper, the focus isupon how the meanings attached to ‘intellectualdisability’ informed the nature and implementationof the curriculum. It sets out to describe staffperspectives on the aims and practices of outreach,as well as on the stigma potential of intellectualdisability. Their views suggested that the stigma ofspecial schooling was pervasive and extended tothemselves (see Riseborough ; Todd ), asMaggie Lauder’s comment reveals:

‘This is the end of the road here, you not goingto get much lower than this. Its the bottom rungof the ladder for us and the kids. In – years,some of these kids might end up in aninstitution, maybe an ATC [Adult TrainingCentre]. A couple might even get the chance tolive in a small house in the community. By moststandards, it’s not a very bright future. And somepeople would say it’s just the same for us,wouldn’t they? In the comps, they’ve gotsomething tangible, like exam results. We don’t.Some of our kids aren’t going to learn much.What they do is so small that it’s not really thatimportant to most people.’

Many teachers felt that they were co-victims ofthe reputation attached to special schools,emphasizing Goffman’s () arguments that theeffects of stigma are not confined to those who areprimarily stigmatized. Rather, stigma can betransferred to those individuals who ‘becomerelated through the social structure to the




stigmatised individual’, to the extent that both canbe treated, ‘in some respects as one’ (Goffman, p. ). As a consequence, the teachers atAfton Lodge can be thought of as having acquireda ‘courtesy stigma’ (Goffman , p. ) which, asKate Jafree noted, echoes the disquiet overdisclosure. Meldicot () reported that, forstudents:

‘Other teachers just look at me when I tell themwhat I do. It’s like they’re thinking, “She can’t bemuch of a teacher really.” They think we have apretty easy life down here.’

Such sentiments seem to legitimatize Diniz’s(, p. ) claim that special educationrepresents the ‘stigma zone of education’, at least asfar as teachers are concerned. However, teachersalso felt that the stigma potential of intellectualdisability extended into their day-to-day workwithin community settings, the mainstay of theAfton Lodge curriculum. The work of the OutreachUnit was directed towards easing students out oftheir school roles and making them accustomed tothe type of lives which they would lead as adultsbeyond school. It was informed by broadunderstandings of the typical careers of people withintellectual disability in that it excluded a widevariety of adult-related roles and experiences, andin particular, work. As for most young people withintellectual disability (see Evans et al. ; May &Hughes ; Todd et al. ), employment forAfton Lodge’s students was seen as an unlikelyprospect. In contrast to student conversations withthe present author and each other, there was anoticeable lack of discourse either in schooldocuments, in talk between staff, or between staffand students concerning the world of work. Thisderived not so much from staff views concerningstudent competencies, but from an understandingthat employers might view them as socially andeconomically unattractive. As the head teacherexplained:

‘There’s one or two in this year’s group whocould keep down a simple job, as long assomebody made sure they could get there, andmade sure they did the job properly. But it’s notrealistic. How many employers are going to wantkids like ours when there’s a thousand other kids

better equipped than ours are? It’s prettycompetitive out there, and what chance do ourkids have?’

Instead, the aim of the curriculum was to instil instudents the necessary ‘skills of living’. The ‘skills ofliving’ referred more to skills and knowledgeappropriate for dealing with and living within thecommunity. This was informed by three educationalgoals: () providing students with a familiarity withthe outside world; () easing them out of thespecial school environment; and () building up thecommunity’s familiarity of people with intellectualdisability. In this sense, it was a programmedesigned to overcome the type of findings emergingfrom a broad literature which reveals that peoplewith intellectual disability experience limited accessto ordinary community settings (de Kock et al.). The formal aim of outreach can beconsidered as one designed to introduce twoestranged groups to each other. As Mr Kennedyexplained to a group of parents whose childrenwould move to those units in the subsequent schoolyear, the name of the Outreach Unit clearlyestablished these functions:

‘All our pupils are expected, to a greater or lesserdegree, to become integrated into the localcommunity. Although this is a good thing intheory, it presents problems too. What we tryhere is to prepare them for life outside. Weshould welcome that, but there’s a big differencebetween the sheltered environment of AftonLodge, where certain behaviours are tolerated,and the community, where they are not. We haveto admit that our students are not reallyequipped for some aspects of life. It can alsomean they are exposed and vulnerable tocoercion and exploitation. So in their final yearsin the school we offer a structured programme todeal with those problems. What we do here is toprepare them for the community, for life outsideschool. The “Outreach Unit” isn’t just a fancyname, you know. It means we spend a lot of timereaching out beyond the classroom into thecommunity. If we have to teach children how todo that, then there’s not much point doing itwithin the confines of the school. We use thecommunity.’




The head teacher’s comments indicate some ofthe difficulties people with intellectual disability areconsidered to face in public settings. Importantly,the social impact or stigma of intellectual disabilitywas a manifest issue which the school had toconfront in dealing with the management ofschool:public interface. Such spaces or face-to-faceencounters between stigmatized and non-stigmatized groups, as outlined above in the‘Introduction’, can represent uncomfortableencounters for both parties (Goffman )through which stigmatized individuals extract asense of self (Schneider & Conrad ). It wasstaff rather than students who viewed this spacewith considerable apprehension. The outside worldwas not seen by staff as replete with opportunities,but was limited or constrained either by theperceived intolerance of the community towardstheir students, or by the potential students had toembarrass staff or members of the public. It was apotentially hostile or confounding arena which staffbelieved could not be typically visited with ease.For example, staff often referred to the frequencyand intensity with which they felt monitored there:

‘I think going out can be really hard work. It ispretty demanding if you’re stuck in the classroomall day. It can be nice going out bowling orswimming. But it’s difficult if you go out tosomewhere that you haven’t been to before.Staring’s the hardest.You get all those funnylooks. People just look at you and stare. It’sawful.’

Staff perceptions concerning the relationshipbetween the community and their pupils tended torestrict the range of community activities andplaces which the school could exploit for their‘educational’ resources. Although staff in AftonLodge felt that the community was an appropriateplace for people with intellectual disability, therewere also certain difficulties: students wereperceived as unreliable social actors within everydaysettings, lacking in knowledge concerning theappropriate behavioural repertoires for ‘public life’;and the public were viewed as having a low regardof people with intellectual disability. Esther Easton,a nursery nurse, commented that the public wereseen as a potentially hostile body and that staff

shared a view that one important aspect of theirwork was corrective in its approach:

‘It’s not their fault that they don’t know what todo when they see us coming. I mean, they’re notused to seeing people like them, integration hasonly been going on for a short time. I didn’tknow about people like them till I came here towork. So I can understand their reactions. So themore we get out, the more they learn. I supposewe’re teaching our pupils to be more sociallyacceptable and we’re introducing the communityto handicapped people.’

The present author’s observations revealed thatthe negative public attitude towards students wasexpressed in a variety of ways: through keeping‘social distance’ (see Albrecht et al. ) or by notgranting students the anonymity that is taken forgranted by most people in their dealings in thepublic realm (see Lofland ). Class trips tendedto be publicly noted and it was also likely for othersto go to great lengths to avoid any possibility ofinteraction with students. Staff felt that it was notunusual for a space to appear for them to movethrough and then to be watched as they did so. Forexample, on one occasion, as the school minibusapproached a roadside cafe, Katie Lonendremarked that it looked too busy. However, JeanLorimer replied, ‘Don’t worry.You wait till they seewho’s coming for lunch.You’ll soon see a spacedeveloping!” The public’s reactions wereinterpreted, by staff at least, as those of avoidance.Students were the objects of special attention whichindicated that their status was that of undesirableoutsiders:

‘You see people walking around, pretending we’renot there, and that’s only if they weren’t luckyenough to see us coming in the first place. Ninetimes out of , if you sit next to someone in acafe, they’ll get up and walk away. Or maybethey’ll give up their seats, but that’s only a morepolite way of getting out of the way. They makeour job twice as hard.’

As well as dealing with a perceived intolerance,staff also felt that they were continually threatenedwith embarrassing situations arising from thebehaviour of their students. Most staff had theirown stories outlining such events, of which thefollowing is illustrative:




‘We were in a shop when Robbie came shufflingup behind me with his trousers all loose at hiswaist, asking me to pull them up.You can feeleveryone looking at you, your face turningbeetroot and all.’

The general feeling of public work was capturedin the view of staff member who said that, ‘Younever know what to expect. The only thing that’spredictable is that it’ll be unpredictable!’ The nextsection of the present paper describes the copingstrategies staff used in public spaces and the forceswhich guided the use of these tactics.

Insulated adventure: staff activity in community settings

The domain was viewed as a potentiallyunwelcoming one for the students, and as the databelow will reveal, one which appeared to draw staffinto a highly visible role. The data show thatstudents frequently fractured taken-for-grantedrules governing social interaction, and that staff hadto be diligent in repairing or preventing any suchfractures. Furthermore, it tended to be staff andstudents who were viewed as responsible for anysuch fractures. As a result, staff sought to limitrather than encourage face-to-face interactionbetween students and other people. Staff views onworking in public places were much in line withLofland’s () views of the community as a placeabounding with social control practices whichdemand a high degree of compliance. The force ofthese demands can be examined in relation toLofland’s () three broad rules for theregulation of behaviour in public places: () civilinattention; () audience role prominence; and ()civility towards diversity. Anonymity is described byLofland (, p. ) as a principle essential toordered public life which is maintained throughthree forms of social control:

‘. . . copresence without comingling, awarenesswithout engrossment, courtesy withoutconversation.’

These rules are considered important inprotecting anonymity in public, but seemed alwaysto be transgressed upon the arrival of outreachstudents. Staff were aware of being followedthrough public places by a sequence of stares,

violating Lofland’s () first principle of ‘civilinattention’, which is the feeling that, while perhapsnoted, one’s presence in public places does notseem to merit the special attention. Goffman ()held that staring, for example, was reserved only forthe ‘non-person’. Being stared at in public wasuncomfortable not simply because it indicated ahigh level of visibility, but also because it wasinterpreted as indicating the presence of students tobe both illegitimate and unwelcome. As one teachercommented:

‘We don’t get to go out very often. That’ssomething other classes, the older classes domore. We get out once a year if we’re lucky. Butsaying that, I can’t stand being stared ateverywhere we go. There are two types of stares.The “Oh love ’em” look, and the . . . Well youcan see what they’re thinking – “What the hellare you doing here?” It really makes me angry.But then I think that really I’m no different. Istare when I see groups of kids like ours.’

The second principle which was apparentlyviolated during the public life of outreach was thatconcerning ‘audience role prominence’. This refersto a preference individuals have to be members ofthe ‘audience’ in public places, rather than feelingas if they are being treated as performers. However,and usually unintentionally, the behaviour of thestudents attracted public attention, as the field notetaken from the present authors observations duringthe students’ arranged school holiday dramaticallyrevealed:

‘During the disco this evening, Joe wasperforming on the dance floor. Not only was hedancing by himself in amongst a group of fellowcampers, he was also miming to the record, “YouAre the Sunshine of My Life?” His armsoutstretched, he pleaded for the affections of awoman sitting close to the edge of the dancefloor. There were two other women, unconnectedwith the school, who took photographs of him.As the song ended, Joe embraced himself, thenhung his head. The end of his routine wasmarked by a round of applause by the threewomen.’

In addition, a breach of this principle can have animpact upon staff, where, once again, the sense of




being under surveillance and not fitting in looms asan important dimension of community activities:

‘You can feel them [the public] looking at you,like they’re saying, “I don’t want this happeningto me. Sort this out!” They’re embarrassed, youcan see it. They don’t know how to react. Thenthey’re looking at you for some kind of help. “AmI doing okay?” I don’t know whether to feel sorryfor them or angry. But you end up by trying toget the child away from them.’

The final principle of life in the public realm andone which also seemed to be violated whenstudents were in public places involves ‘civilitytowards diversity’, a principle which directs peopleto be even-handed in their treatment of others,where differences are disattended to so as to confera ‘. . . sense of freedom from judgement whichmany people report . . . as a major pleasure of being“out in public”’ (Lofland , p. ). Civility inthis sense does not necessarily imply anapproachable and pleasant pattern of behaviour, butthat one’s reactions should tend to be universalisticand non-discriminating. Observations ofunrequested charitable donations or patheticglances at students were typical of staff accounts ofcommunity presence, indicating that this rule wasbreached when people with intellectual disabilitywere in public places, as described by MaryMorrison:

‘People often go out of their way or bend overbackwards to the point of embarrassment. Givingus their seats or even a couple of quid. It’s likewe’re being watched all the time. There’s neverany privacy. It makes you feel that the kids havegot to be better behaved than anyone else just toprove that they’re all right.’

There was a palpable sense of staff apprehensionabout the high-profile nature of their work in thepublic domain, a domain more typically valued forits anonymity The extent and frequency with whichstaff felt that these principles were violatedcompelled them to manage their public presence soas to make it less remarkable. Indeed, this impliedthat the reputed insulation of the special school wascarried into the community. For example, somevisits were little more than rides in the minibuswith only a brief stop at a park. Alternatively, one

student might leave the bus with one member ofstaff to visit a shop. Other visits to public placeswere arranged at times when no one or only a fewother people would be present. Visits to swimmingpools or sports’ centres were at specially arrangedtimes when others were denied access to thefacilities. For example, on one wet day in lateSeptember, the present author went with outreachto a special event organized by a local charity: adeserted beach occupied only by other staff andstudents from other special schools. There were alsothe ‘tried and tested’ places where it was felt thatindividuals had become accustomed to the presenceof students from Afton Lodge, i.e. locations wherepeople show consideration, to use Birenbaum’s() terms. As one member of staff ’s descriptionof novel settings indicates, surveillance was thegoverning performance in unfamiliar sites:

‘I prefer going to those tried and tested places,where we know people are going to be helpful.It’s awful when you go somewhere new for thefirst time.You feel people turning their headstowards you, sizing us up, and you feel you’rekeeping a watch on them all the time so that theydon’t wander off or annoy people by askingquestions all the time. It can take a lot ofexplaining. If we go bowling or swimming, wellthey’re used to our children. They know what toexpect. They might come and talk to thechildren. It makes us feel that we can just get onwith what we want to do.’

Staff also held views concerning the type ofstudent who might attract more or less attention, sothat another strategy staff deployed to minimizetheir profile was student selection. As noted in themethod section above, one outreach group, i.e.those with more severe impairments, very seldomtook part in outreach public visits. Even within thefunctioning outreach group, there were somestudents, i.e. those whose behaviour was consideredproblematic, who would be left behind in schoolwhen the Outreach Unit went public. Staff wereselective concerning the students who they took onschool visits, leaving behind those they felt placed astrain on community tolerance:

‘You’ve got to be careful about who you takewith you.You can’t really have a “bad one”







tagged onto a “good group”. That stretches theacceptance level a bit too much. So you have toget the right group for them so that they canenjoy themselves without other people paying toomuch attention to them. So it all depends onwho you take out. Like some of them are reallydifficult to handle.You’ve just got to sense whenits wiser to leave someone behind.’

Therefore, staff activity in public places waslargely circumscribed by their view of thecommunity as less than receptive to the presence ofAfton Lodge students. Each had their own ‘atrocitystories’ (Dingwall ) concerning the publicaspect of their work which broadly confirmed thepotential risks of public life for stigmatizedindividuals set out in the ‘Introduction’. While moststaff felt that their presence in the public domainmerited special attention, most had tales concerningmore difficult and more extreme reactions.Nevertheless, while staff wished to minimize theirpresence in community settings, this also impliedpreparing some settings for the impending arrival oftheir students. Chris Guthrie’s comment belowseemed to indicate that, on occasions, staff favourthe use of a form of ‘anticipatory preventive telling’(Schneider & Conrad , p. ) or ‘pre-emptivedisclosure’ (Blum , p. ), a strategic form ofvoluntary disclosure aimed at reducing the risk ofinvoking negative community attitudes:

‘I often write to people at the places we’re goingto visit. I always mention that we’re coming froma special school. I leave it up to them then. Ifthey don’t want us to come, they’ll let you know.I do stress that our pupils are well behaved. Theycan always say they’re busy or fully booked. Iprefer doing it that way than just simply turningup or having to do it in person. I worrysometimes that that’s wrong, that I should justturn up like I would for myself. But, then again, Idon’t want to be turned away at the door. That’swhat happened to Hanah More’s class last year.She had a tough time last Christmas. She was intown with her class and called into a restaurantto book places for a Christmas meal. So she wentin, asked and they said, ‘No!’ They didn’t wanttheir customers bothered with the likes of ourkids. She went to another place and they were

only allowed in after the owner had the pupilslined up and inspected. I can’t imagine anythingworse, so I write first.’

The range of strategies staff used to managesocial presence suggests that they do not conformstrictly to the role of ‘benefactor’ (Edgerton ),in that staff seem to place the needs of thecommunity over those of their students and feelable to disclose information to other peopleconcerning the identity of students. Furthermore,staff also opted to ‘disclose’ as a means of repairingdifficult situations. For example, on one occasionwhile a small group of students and some membersof staff visited a market, some students were beingchastised by a stall holder for touching her goods.When the students had moved on, the teacherexplained to the stall holder that her reaction wasunfair given it was surely ‘obvious’ that the youngpeople had a ‘mental handicap’. The stall holderreplied that it was surely the teacher’s responsibilityto have ‘kept a better eye on them’. On anotheroccasion, a security guard in a shopping centrereturned a child to staff castigating the staffmember for not performing adequate supervisoryduties.

Therefore, staff felt that they were responsible formanaging interaction in public places andaccountable to the wider community for theiractions. It was clear that staff interpretations ofintellectual disability were largely negative in thatthey perceived the world outside school as not onlyrestricted in opportunity, but also as potentiallyhostile for students and awkward for themselves. Itwas clearly a difficult environment to work within.The data in the following sections present data onhow students perceived themselves and theirrelationship to the outside world, and reveals thatstudents were not expected to acquire strategies fordealing with the type of problems associated withmoving through social spaces by themselves.

Student perspective

In the following section, students’ attitudes towardsthe world beyond school, and the meaning andimplications which intellectual disability has forthem are examined. The aim is to study the extentto which the stigma attached to intellectual

disability exerts a restricting influence on the depthand breadth of students’ lives. The limited empiricalresearch which deals with pupils’ perspectives ofspecial schooling indicates that, while many seem toenjoy its day-to-day experiences, they are painfullyaware of its stigmatizing potential (see Jones ;Meldicot ). Students at Afton Lodge alsoenjoyed their time at school, but they were muchless reserved than might be expected in proclaimingtheir educational status to others. For example,during their week at a holiday complex, Morag heldno inhibition in declaring it to a large audience oflargely non-disabled holiday-makers:

Compere: What’s your name?Morag: Morag CollinsCompere: And where are you from Morag?Morag: Afton Lodge special school, Kinraddie.

Students’ proclamations such as this were notattempts to demonstrate a pride in what otherpeople might regard as a devalued identity, ratherthese stemmed from the fact that many of AftonLodge’s students had not yet learned to appreciatethe stigma potential of special schools or ofintellectual disability. It was evident from thepresent author’s conversations with students thatthey had no heightened sensitivity of the meaningbeing a special school student held for others. Whilesome acknowledged the special nature of AftonLodge, i.e. as a ‘school for the handicapped’,paradoxically this did not imply they viewedthemselves as ‘handicapped’ young people. As formany of the other students, the author spoke with,Alan felt that a ‘handicap’ referred to a physical orsensory impairment, confirming research findingsfrom other studies (see Cheston ; Davies &Jenkins ). Since Duncan had no suchimpairment, the term ‘handicapped’ was notapplicable to him:

Stuart: What kind of school is this Alan?Alan: For the handicappedStuart: Handicapped? What does that mean?Alan: Dunno.Stuart: Does that mean that you have a handicap?Alan: No.Stuart: Do your brothers come to this school?Alan: No.Stuart: Why not?

Alan: Dunno. I’ve got to come on a bus. Theydon’t.

Stuart: On a bus? Are there any handicappedchildren on the bus?

Alan:Yeah, in wheelchairs. And my mate Frankie,he can’t talk properly.

Stuart: What about you? Do you have a handicap?Alan: No, I can walk.Stuart: Have you ever heard of people who have a

mental handicap?Alan:Yeah, people who are thick and the like.Stuart: Is there anyone in Afton Lodge who has a

mental handicap?Alan:Yeah, William. But my mum tells me to stay

away from him because he hurts me.Stuart: What about your brothers? Would they like

it here?Alan (rubbing his hands):Yeah.Stuart: Why?Alan: ’Cos its a good school.

Robbie was another student who associated theterm ‘handicap’ with a sensory or physicalimpairment. In Robbie’s case, ‘handicap’ wassomething which might have been applicable whenhe was younger, but had no current relevance interms of self-labelling. For Robbie, ‘beinghandicapped’ was something he had ‘grown out of’:

Stuart: Has anyone ever said to you that you werehandicapped or anything like that?

Robbie: I think my mum told me something onceupon a time. She said I had a bad toe orsomething. Do you want to see it? It’s betternow anyway. I’m a young man now.

After more than a decade of special schooling, itseemed that students had not encountered thattumultuous point which marks the beginning oftheir ‘moral careers’ (Goffman ) as disabledpeople, i.e. the ‘biographical disruption’ (Bury) which comes from an awareness of self asdifferent from others. While the majority of studentshad been given a stigmatizing identity either at, orclose to, their births, it was surprising that they hadnot yet acquired an understanding that they hadbeen ascribed a potentially troubling label as theymade the transition into adulthood. Nevertheless,they did demonstrate an awareness of the natureand function of other social identities and claimed




some for themselves. Students held fairly typicalaspirations concerning their futures and saw thefuture open with opportunities. When I spoke tostudents about their futures, they spoke ofunremarkable events such as weddings,honeymoons, having children and working. What isremarkable is that few people with intellectualdisability find access to such social roles and events(Koller et al. ; Richardson et al. ; Evanset al. ). Therefore, it seems that studentsrecognized and applied typical and specificidentities to themselves. For example, studentsgendered individuals of a particular age andextrapolated from them, as the extract from one‘opportunistic group interview’ with studentsshows:

Stuart: What will you do when you leave school,Nicky?

Nicky: Dunno, Stu. I’ve been here for flippingyears, mate. I’ll say I have. So I’ll be in a badmood when I leave. I might meet a youngwoman and get married. I might have a job ina video shop.

Mike: Maybe I’ll be a teacher. It all depends see.Stuart: Depends on what?Mike: On passing exams, Stu.Stuart: So you think you’ll get a job?Mike: Dunno. To tell you the truth, I dunno. I

could make sweets and eat ‘em.Stuart: What about leaving home?Mike: I’m stayin’ put I am.You’ve got no chance

there.Stuart: Why?Mike: I just don’t want to. I’m stayin’ put with

my parents.Stuart: What about if you meet someone?Mike: If I meets someone and gets married, then

I’ll leave. I’ll go home and see how my oldman and my mum are gettin’ on.

Stuart: What about you, Cathy?Cathy: Go to college.Stuart: And after that?Cathy: Get a job, buy a house. Get married.Eve: I’m not leaving school this year.Stuart: Well, what about when you do leave?Eve: I’m going to get a job in the school.Stuart: Doing what?Eve Helping the children in the nursery. I do it

now. Peggy Cameron says I can come back anddo it when I leave school.

Alex: Me too. I’m going to help with the dinners.My aunt does it. She says I can help her.

Stuart: What about getting married? Cathy saidshe was.

Eve [pointing at Mike]: Maybe.Mike: No way, Stu. Uh-uh! Girls, see, they get

you randy. Hot ’n’ randy, see. They want totouch your body.Your back, your tummy.

Eve [pointing between Mike’s legs]: And your . . . mmm.

Mike: Don’t be rude, Eve. And they want babies.Stuart: What do you think it would be like to be

married, Cathy?Cathy: Honeymoon.Stuart: Where?Cathy: America.Stuart: What about after your honeymoon?Cathy: Have a baby.Duncan: We’re getting married next year and

we’re going to live in our own home. There’llbe no babies, dogs, cats or kids.

Cathy: I’d like two, but not too soon.Duncan: No way, no babies. I’m the boss.

As students approached the final years of specialschooling, they retained their ‘initial innocence’regarding their social identities, and for all intentsand purposes, remained at the ‘pre-stigma’ (Alonzo& Reynolds , p. ) stage of their subjectivecareers. Despite their immersion in a world whichseemed at every turn to be founded upon and likelyto reflect back other peoples’ versions of intellectualdisability, students had not acquired anunderstanding of themselves or their futures whichwas based upon, or even acknowledged, suchmeanings. They had not yet come to experience theself-estrangement commonly experienced bydisabled people where taken for granted views ofself are disrupted and called into question (Bury; Charmaz ). Therefore, the students hadnot learned the one lesson others have identified asthe primary lesson which special school studentsare taught (see Shearer ), i.e. that they belongto a very different world than other people theirage. Therefore, students held no apprehensionsabout the public domain in the way that theparticipants in Edgerton’s () study did. From




the student perspective, at least, stigma did notappear to offer an analytical device to explainlimited social participation. For the most part,students looked at the wider world as bothpromising and inviting.

Insulated perspectives: staff management ofinformation

The data presented thus far indicate that peoplewith intellectual disability occupy a world whichwould seem to reinforce the stigma of intellectualdisability at every turn. However, the self-identitiesand subjective careers of students did not appear tosupport this view, and demand a re-examination oftaken-for-granted assumptions about specialschooling and its impact upon students. Given thatstudents’ self-identities were inconsistent with astigma framework which depended upon anawareness of self as stigmatized and a compulsiontowards secrecy, a study of their socialenvironments for their support in countering stigmaand legitimizing typical identities is required. AsBerger & Kellner (, p. ) remarked:

‘The plausibility and stability of the world, associally defined, is dependent upon the strengthand continuity of significant relationships inwhich conversation about this world can becontinually carried on . . . the reality of the worldis sustained through conversation with significantothers.’

The following data suggest that an importantaspect of staff work is given over to distorting thisconversation and insulating students from theperceived intolerance of the community However,before this line of analysis is followed, somerecognition of students as significant sources ofconfirmation of each other’s preferred futures isrequired. Students frequently shared elaborate plansfor their futures, and spent much time with eachother during and outside school hours; for example,attending specialist social or sports clubs. Onoccasion, students might argue when one studenttrespassed into another’s plans; for example, whenRichard and Kevin argued about how manychildren a family should have. When Richard saidhe was going to have children, Kevin felt thatthis would be too many for his wife to cope with

and revealed again some of the genderedstereotypes the students entertained:

Kevin:You’re always poking your nose in Rich’.Anyway, after college I’m going to have a joband kids. Then, when they’re older, they canget a job and leave home.

Richard: I’m going to have one, no two. And adog and cat.

Kevin: Well I’m going to have and that’s that.Richard: No, Kevin. That’s too many for your

wife. She’s got too much to do if she’s got .She’ll have to get the tea made and put it outon the table for you coming home from work.How’s she going to do that with kids? [Helaughs]

Kevin: Anyway, I’ll be out working in a videoshop.

Richard: No way, that’s my job!Kevin: Look Rich’, I’m going to sell video

machines.You’re going to sell tapes.Richard: That’s okay then.

However, staff played an instrumental role inconferring validity to students’ ambitions, as didothers outside school, and this was effected throughthe control of information. Staff prevented leakageof the wider meaning and significance of ‘intellectualdisability’; for example, limited employmentprospects, restricted opportunities to develop sexualrelationships, and a suspicion over the views andactions of others. Glaser & Strauss () derived atypology of ‘awareness contexts’ from a substantiveanalysis of interactions between dying individuals,their families and medical staff. Awareness contextsdirect attention towards the extent to whichknowledge relating to the individual’s diagnosis andprognosis is shared between these individuals.Glaser & Strauss (, p. ) described four typesof awareness contexts, two of which, i.e. ‘open’ and‘closed’, are relevant here:

‘An open awareness context obtains when eachinteractant is aware of the other’s true identityand his [sic] own identity in the eyes of the other.A closed awareness context obtains when oneinteractant does not know either the other’sidentity or the other’s view of his identity.’

Disclosure of a stigmatized identity has beendeclared to be a problem for a number of groups of




people (Edgerton ; Goffman ; Levitin; Plummer ; Ponse ; Schneider &Conrad ; Matthews & Matthews ; Miall; Alonzo & Reynolds ; Prior ), and theimplications of a particular distribution ofknowledge concerning an identity and the socialinterests it serves have been widely commentedupon (see, Plummer ; Ponse ). Typically,the stigmatized individual is considered responsiblefor managing ‘closed awareness contexts’. However,although such a context operated within the school,it was managed by staff not students. Staff did nothand out ‘disabled identities’, as Thomas ()suggested, but created fictional biographies (Glaser& Strauss , p. ). Todd & Shearn ()found that the parents of adults with intellectualdisability conduct very similar practices. To sustainthe lack of student awareness about their identities,staff avoided mentioning terms such as‘handicapped’ in front of their students. Thepresent author never heard staff refer directly totheir students as ‘handicapped’ or ‘disabled’ people.Such terms might be used in classroomconversations with the author or with other visitors,but not if students were within hearing distance.However, students’ identities did not have to beformally explained to other people. It was moretypical for staff to use terms such as ‘children likethese’, a phrase which indicated a presumption ofdisability. The closest any form of classroom inter-action came to touching on student impairmentsoccurred after students had watched a video ofyoung people with intellectual disability in a collegesetting. Chris Guthrie’s labelling was euphemistic:

‘These young people you saw at college werepeople like ourselves, people with special needs.You saw them doing lots of things at college thatwere different from school.You’ve got to be ableto look after yourselves at college, you’ve got toget your own dinners and you’ve got to get fromroom to room by yourselves.’

When the present author asked some of theAfton Lodge staff if they felt that their studentswere aware of their attributed identities or whetherthey themselves had broached the subject with theirstudents, they seem surprised at my line ofquestioning, adding that it was something to whichthey had never given much thought. Some staff

noted that they had learned it was a subject bestavoided in their dealings with students. This hadcome about through experience. For example, ChrisGuthrie felt that informing students of theirdisabilities was a specialist task and one for whichshe felt ill-equipped to manage. Chris’ commentsindicated that dealing with ‘intellectual disability’ inan explicit fashion had to be seen as an example of‘breaking bad news’ (McLenahen & Lofland ;Taylor ):

‘Cath’s mum came up to me once and said thatCath had said to her after watching a televisionprogramme that, “Mum, I’m different from you.Duncan’s different and Andrew too.” She saidthat Peter, another pupil with Down’s syndrome,had also remarked about someone else wholooked like him. I think that’s as far as it goes. Itused to be different though. I can remembersaying to a child here once, something about himbeing handicapped. He was offended – denied itoutright. He threw a real “wobbly” on me. I justlearned it’s something you’ve got to be carefulwith.’

The present author then asked her then if shethought students should know about theirintellectual disability and she replied:

‘It’s not my job to tell them. That’s up to theparents. How can we tell them it’s not going tohappen, that it’s all make-believe. Imagine howlong they’ve been saying things like that for.’

Staff felt they would be undermining parents’strategies for dealing with their offspring, a strategydescribed in detail elsewhere (Todd & Shearn). Their avoidance of dealing directly with theissue of disability also stemmed from an empathicappreciation of the effect which this would haveupon students. Teachers held a view of disclosure as‘bad news’ for students, and therefore, judged it tobe potentially distressing for them. Thus, staffhandle disclosure by not disclosing it at all. Someteachers felt that they could not broach the subjectof student impairments since they felt constrainedby their understandings of parents’ needs. Thus, anawareness of intellectual disability impliedsurrendering to its wider and negative socialmeaning, as Hanah More, for example,commented:




‘I don’t know if they ever should know. I thinkthey’re pretty happy with their lives. How do youthink they’d be if they knew? They’d have nothingto look forward to! As it is, they enjoy talkingabout their lives. I think they’d just be distressedif they knew it had no real basis.’

Therefore, staff felt that it was best to keep suchsecrets from students, believing this to be in theirown, the parents’ and the students’ interests. If tobe made aware of their social status was taken bystaff as putting students through a loss of identity,and the denial of a particular meaningful andpositive view of self, then staff preferred to offertacit support to student views of self. Therefore,staff retained knowledge of their students’ socialidentities as private knowledge and were willing toconfirm students’ own aspirations, i.e. they can beseen as active, if unintentional, purveyors offictional identities. These affirming actions hadsome instrumental value for staff in that theseallowed staff to exert control over students. In astudy of carers of people with Alzheimer’s disease,Blum () found that deception was a prevalentfeature of family relationships and that this was auseful form of practical social control. In the samefashion, the staff of Afton Lodge tended to supportpupils’ ‘fictional biographies’ for fear of offendingthem and because these could be used as a meansof motivating students towards complying with staffdefinitions of good classroom behaviour. Thefollowing example from the present author’s fieldnotes illustrates this point:

William: I’m going to have my own car when Ileave college:

Tom Samson: Well, if you’re going to have yourown car, you’ll need to learn to drive. Thatmeans you’ve got to listen to what other peopletell you. So why don’t you start now and showme you can sit and listen, and learn something.

Students’ views were used as a mechanism ofsituational control, i.e. a tool for allowing staff toget through their work with minimal disruption,and with the attention and motivation of students.In the example given below, Hanah More’scomments were initiated after she had tried severaltimes to ask a student to be quiet:

‘Do you think Daniel wants to get married tosomeone who never knows when to be quiet? Ithink he’d get pretty fed up with you after a fewweeks. Don’t you? How would you like it,Bernadette Tone, if you were married to someonewho went on and on all the time? You wouldn’tlike it very much, would you? So why don’t youjust leave Daniel alone for a few minutes, he’strying to do some grown-up work and he doesn’tneed you pestering him. Sit down quietly now,please.’

Additionally, identity-confirming interactionsmight involve making the realization of students’aspirations conditional upon their continuing goodbehaviour, i.e. these were intended to motivatestudents:

Kate Jafree: What do you fancy doing when youleave school, Louis? Have you given it muchthought?

Louis: Be a hairdresser.Kate Jafree:You never told me that before, Louis!

They’ve got a salon at college. Maybe if you’regood and well behaved there, they’ll let youhelp there.

In other cases, particularly when students andstaff found themselves in each others’ companyduring pauses in or while waiting for the end of theschool day, it was not unusual for staff to share instudent ambitions. In these more sporadic butlengthier interactions, a teacher’s contribution mightnot only validate students’ ambitions, but might alsoprovide information to make their accounts moreplausible and elaborate, as this extract from thepresent author’s field notes indicates:

Duncan: I’ll be in the hotel with Cathy, then I’llgo down to the beach with my mates.

Jane Maxwell:You’re not taking friends with you?Duncan [rubbing his hands together]:Yeah!Jane Maxwell:You’re not supposed to take your

mates with you when you’re on yourhoneymoon. It’s supposed to be a time whenyou’re alone with your new wife.

Duncan: And we’ll go down on the beach and getboozed up on ‘the Dark’.

Jane Maxwell: They don’t drink ‘Dark’ in Greece,Mike. They drink lager! Are you taking yourmum and dad with you?




Duncan: No, they’ll pack my luggage.Jane Maxwell: Where are you flying from then?Duncan: Dunno. I don’t do the plane. My dad’ll

sort it out and give us a lift to the airport.Jane Maxwell: What about speaking Greek?Duncan: What’s that?Jane Maxwell: It’s what they speak in Greece. It’s

a different language from ours.Duncan: Oh, I don’t know Greek. We’ll just get

the bus from the airport. There’ll be plenty offood in the hotel. Plenty of pork pies! We’ll goon a Friday or Saturday. Cathy’ll choose. We’llgo for days. Two weeks of getting boozed upon the lager.

Jane Maxwell: That’s it, Duncan, you’re a lagerlout.

Students’ claims to typical lifestyles were notdisrupted by staff, but encouraged by them. Staffsupported students’ ‘initial innocence’ (Davis ,p. ) of the world and their place within it.Therefore, they were active collaborators in thebuilding of student perspectives, perspectives whichprovided them with a positive sense of meaning andself-worth, and which staff considered essential tothe students’ psychological survival. Theseperspectives were effective in circumventingpotential trouble, ensuring that staff did not have todeal with the emotional injuries disclosure wouldinevitably lead to. Once again, staff interests figureas an important dimension in dealing with thenature of students’ social lives and views. Studentaffirmations of having typical social identities andaspirations were maintained rather thancontradicted by staff. Therefore, studentspresupposed that their own views were shared andaccepted by all, but these views tended to be‘fictions [which] can too easily come to serve assubstitutes for the “real thing” ’ (Davis ,pp. –).

Staff were not the only individuals who obligedstudents in their aspirations, and deception orsilence were widespread practices. In variousinteractions between students and the public,members of the public also ‘went along with’students’ tales about their lives. Where otherpeople’s behaviour seemed specifically to drawattention to the social meaning of students’intellectual disability, these were not necessarily

addressed to students themselves. Instead, theseseemed a means of saving face as a consequence ofthe disabilities students posed for them. Duringlunch break at the college students attended oneday per week in their final school year, some of theoutreach students had skipped to the front of thelunch queue in the canteen. None of the otherstudents sanctioned their behaviour. One of thecollege students who had lost his place in the queuewas being encouraged by his friends to hurry andjoin them. He looked at his friends, and tapping hisfinger against the side of his head [making the‘crazy’ sign], mouthed, ‘It’s them – they’re nuts.’Many of the signs which communicated the statusof students in public places were not intended to bereceived by students but by others. It appeared thatmany people made use of the students’ social statusto manage the difficulties which they caused forothers and that the prevailing attitude was thatothers should make allowances for their difficulties.In the majority of cases, interactions with pupilstended to support whatever claims the studentswere making or their definitions of the situation.Thus, other people appeared to take seriously anyclaims students made:

‘Sitting in the cafe, Alex was told off by amember of staff for “annoying” a family sitting atthe next table. She was waving to the them andsaying, “Hiya.” However, the father indicated itas okay. As time went by, Alex was seated withthe family with her arm around the man. She wasshowing him, and colleagues at the table, the ringthat her boyfriend gave her. She was told she was“lucky” and asked where she was going to getmarried. As it was time to leave, Alex was nowasking the man if she would marry him. When hetold her he was already married, Alex said hecould always divorce her. “Wait a minute and I’llask the wife,” the man said. “No need to love,”his wife added, “You’re welcome to him.” Alexput her arm around the man, said “Honey” andthen kissed him on the cheek.’

Conclusion

The present paper has presented findings on thesocial contexts in which people with intellectualdisability come face to face with the community.




Although the data were derived from a case studyof a special school, these appear congruent with thewider research literature, i.e. the findings underlinethe ambiguous nature of the social lives of peoplewith intellectual disability (Todd et al. ; Grantet al. ). However, the present results add to thisliterature by showing that this outcome is largelysocially managed through the activities andperspectives of staff. Although staff appear asimportant actors in providing people withintellectual disability with an enhanced socialpresence, they are also significant actors in limitingwider social participation, i.e. as well as planningand managing social occasions, staff also acted asbuffers between students and colleagues across arange of social contexts. Therefore, they exert bothan encouraging and constraining influence. Inrelation to the possible roles staff may adopt inpublic settings, the data would suggest that the roleof ‘tour guide’ may provide a more appropriate keyfor unlocking understandings of staff work in thepublic domain. Schmidt () outlined in somedetail the nature and function of such a role in anethnographic study of arranged holiday packages. Itseems to be a part which accounts for the differentoutcomes of integration, i.e. high social presencebut limited social participation. The work of staffcan be equated with the work of tour guides in theway in which they work as danger-minimizingmediators, policing the boundaries between groups(Schmidt ). In this sense:

‘. . . the guided tour, entailing minimalinteraction with natives, and tour guides act asbuffers between tourists and the socialenvironment, arranging transport, interpretingand handling problems which might arise.’(Schmidt , p. ).

This space has been referred to as a ‘touristbubble’ (Schmidt ) which functions toaccommodate but also insulate travellers within ahost culture. This is also consistent with a view ofpeople with disabilities as an example ofsociological ‘strangers’ (Murphy et al. ; Toddet al. ; Grant et al. ), i.e. people withintellectual disability are viewed as marginal actors,experiencing both integration within and insulationfrom a host culture. However, while Grant et al.

() suggested that this may be a transitionalstatus, the data in the present study suggest that itmay be one people with intellectual disability playfor some considerable period, given that it ismanaged and constructed by staff and one whichpeople with intellectual disability have little controlover themselves. Without any voluntary movementfrom within the community itself, or more adequatepreparation and conceptualization of the processesof social participation, people with intellectualdisability will continue to depend upon staff tofoster those opportunities. On this basis, it isdifficult to see how any breakthrough can beachieved. An important basis for moving towardsmore effective practice in this area requires agreater breadth and depth of research on staffactivity in the public domain on a par with researchon staff activity within services settings (e.g. Grant& Moores ; Felce et al. ; Felce & Repp; Jones et al. ). In addition, research oncharacterizing the cultural context and socialecology of the public domain would be of somevalue.

The key obstacles limiting fuller participatoryforms of social interaction are not so muchstudents’ views concerning the relationship betweenself and society, but more the interpretations ofstaff concerning their work and the contexts withinwhich it is conducted. To begin with, they viewtheir work as meeting the aims of two distinctgroups. They are sensitive to the needs of studentsfor rewarding social lifestyles and protection fromnegative social attitudes. However, they are alsomembers of the host culture themselves, and assuch, are sensitive to and familiar with the socialvalues and customs of that group. They share aview of students as ‘rule-breakers’ in socialdomains. Public encounters were difficult for staffin as much as they reveal the tensions stemmingfrom these twin objectives. Like parents of disabledchildren (Vosey ), they felt accountable for anyfracture of interactive rules and responsible fortaking action to smooth over or prevent any suchfracture. In addition, and again in keeping with thecoping strategies of parents (Todd & Shearn )and carers (Blum ), staff constructedinformation control strategies to counteract thestigma potential of intellectual disability. It is staffrather than people with intellectual disability who




monitor situations for the possibility of realizingstigma potential and awkward social interaction.Therefore, staff adopted a semi-insulated approachto their integration work and sought to create a safeinteraction zone for students and the public. AsSchmidt (, p. ) further illustrated, this hasimplications for the possibility of moving beyondfleeting encounters:

‘Guided tours assure that tourists are channelledinto the right place at the right time, while underthe control of someone “responsible” (usually thesite’s own personnel) . . . [The tourist] does nothave to become a member of the culture and beaccepted by the group. He [sic] has notabandoned his former social position, and thetour will guarantee that he won’t.’

The present data reveal that the control ofinformation concerning student identities addedanother significant dimension to the work ofinsulated adventure. Stigma plays a key role ingiving shape to this social profile, but in a muchless traditional fashion. The impact andmanagement of stigma were very much staffconcerns both within the school (Todd ) andwithin community settings. Staff play a further rolein maintaining a ‘protective cocoon’ (Goffman) in a style similar to that of parents. Stigmaplays a central influence over integrative work.Students themselves were not as aware of theirsocial status as much discourse in this fieldsuggests, i.e. they do not necessarily viewthemselves as ‘outsiders’ seeking entry. The label ofintellectual disability is thought to denote suchnegative meanings and carry such powerfulconsequences that, as Edgerton () hasdescribed, individuals so labelled use a variety ofidentities to conceal their disabled status. Thepractice of concealment continues to be aninextricable part of students’ lives in thatinformation concerning their identities waswithheld from them in many routine interactionswith a wide range of other people, and as Simmel(, p. ) writes:

‘The secret in this sense, the hiding of realities bynegative or positive means, is one of man’s [sic]greatest achievements. The secret offers, so tospeak, the possibility of a second world alongside

the manifest world; and the latter is decisivelyinfluenced by the former . . . For even where one. . . does not notice the existence of a secret, thebehaviour of the concealer, and hence the wholerelationship, is certainly modified by it.’

Since students had not acquired the ‘felt stigma’(Scambler & Hopkins ) of ‘intellectualdisability’, it was not likely that students wouldinterpret other people’s behaviour towards them asunusual. On the whole, students were not ‘seekersof information’ (Lofland , p. ), i.e. they werenot overly sensitive regarding the credibility of theirclaims or searching for clues as to how theirpresence as ‘stigmatized’ individuals influencedothers’ behaviours (Davis ). Where the reactionof the public provided some indication that theywere being less than tolerant of the students, thesewere not easily read by students. Interactionsbetween students and people outside school werebased upon a ‘fictional acceptance’ (Davis ) of students’ claims to a credible self. For peoplewith intellectual disability to break out of thispattern of interaction and to exert some choice overtheir social lifestyles, there needs to be someawareness of the challenges of life in the publicdomain.

The lack of knowledge students had concerninghow their lives would be shaped by virtue of theirascribed identities points towards a pervasive andpernicious form of social control which stilloperates to exclude. Thus, while choice has beenseen as a key dimension in integration (Myers et al.; Ramcharan et al. ), its expression will belargely limited by a lack of awareness of thepolitical processes at work. The data discussed inthe present paper highlight the need to give morethought to how to promote more participatoryforms of social interaction in public places. Onedevelopmental element here would be to recognizeand challenge the social interpretation ofintellectual disability, which must also includegiving people themselves some understanding ofhow they are viewed by others (Todd & Shearn). This does not imply a surrender but achallenge to the stigma of intellectual disability, andwould be essential to the construction of an‘empowerment curriculum’ (Mittler ). If thiswere to be taken as a positive step it may well be




that ‘. . . the strength of assertion comes to replacethe protection of secrecy’ (Ponse , p. ).

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the staff and students whoendured my presence over a long period of time,and who gave me considerable help and insight.

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