The Disability Closet: Teachers with Learning Disabilities Evaluate the Risks and Benefits of “Coming Out”

Resilience strategies employed by teachers with dyslexia working at tertiary education

“…However, two of the teachers indicated that they are not going to disclose their dyslexia to their management at all, and only two of them talked about their condition in the job interviews (Article I). These results support the findings of other studies on teachers with LD who discovered that disclosure is a crucial element in the course of teachers' professional lives (Ferri et al, 2001(Ferri et al, , 2005Riddick, 2003;Valle et al, 2004;Vogel et al, 2007;Vogel & Sharoni, 2011). The decision whether to disclose or not seemed to be an ongoing struggle and viewed as a highly personal process affecting teachers' sense of self.…”

“…Their insight awareness into dyslexia enabled them to develop and use alternate and more inclusive strategies to support learning. The findings are concurrent with a few studies on teachers with LD conducted in Israel (Vogel & Sharoni, 2011), in the USA (Ferri et al, 2001(Ferri et al, , 2005Valle et al, 2004;Vogel et al, 2007) and in the UK (Riddick, 2003) that discovered that teachers emphasised the positive impact of their LD, and viewed their disability as an asset. Teachers and teacher trainees with LD have been considered as having had an increased ability to help students and develop more inclusive teaching methods (Duquette, 2000;Ferri et al, 2001;Ferri et al, 2005;Glazzard & Dales, 2012;Riddick, 2003;Vogel & Sharoni, 2011).…”

“…This has raised questions whether individuals with dyslexia are suitable applicants for teaching (Singleton, 1999;O'Dwyer & Thorpe, 2013) In contrast, research confirms that people with dyslexia have been found to be highly successful and effective at the highest occupational levels, including in the teaching profession (Logan, 2009;Reid, Came, & Price, 2008;West, 2010in Leather et al, 2011. Previous studies on the experiences of teacher trainees' from Canada, UK and US (Duquette, 2000;Glazzard & Dale, 2013;Griffiths, 2011;Macleod & Cebula, 2009;Morgan & Rooney, 1997;Riddell & Weedon, 2013;Riddick, 2003) as well as of those practicing teachers with dyslexia (Ferri, Connor, Solis, Valle & Volpitta, 2005;Ferri, Keefe & Gregg, 2001;O'Dwyer & Thorpe, 2013;Riddick, 2003;Valle et al, 2004;Vogel et al, 2007;Vogel & Sharoni, 2011) confirm their existence. How then do tertiary teachers with dyslexia perceive themselves as teachers and negotiate their professional identities?…”

“…For example, in the UK the necessity of teacher trainees' increased literacy and numeracy standards (Macleod & Cebula, 2009;Riddick & English, 2006) has led to questioning whether individuals with specific learning difficulties are suitable applicants for teaching positions (Singleton, 1999;O'Dwyer & Thorpe, 2013). A pool of studies illustrate that the number of students with specific learning difficulties entering higher education has increased (Griffin & Pollak, 2009;Griffiths, 2012;Kunttu & Pesonen, 2013;Valle, Solis, Volpitta, & Connor, 2004).The latest statistics reveal that 5% of students in Finnish HE have a learning difficulty of which dyslexia has been notified as the most common condition (74%) among them (Kunttu & Pesonen, 2013). The Finnish statistics do not reveal the field of study these students have enrolled in but the recent study by Riddell and Weedon (2014) reported that HE students with a diagnosis of dyslexia most typically (17.…”

“…Prior to having made any practical arrangements for the interviews, I considered the topics for discussion, which were based on previous studies and literature on teachers with LD (Ferri et al, 2001(Ferri et al, , 2005Riddick, 2003;Valle et al, 2004;Vogel et al, 2007;Vogel & Sharoni, 2011) and professional identity (Beijaard et al, 2004). The topics were considered in such a way that the tertiary teachers had an opportunity to talk about their professional experiences related to dyslexia as openly as possible, and relating to the principles in the narrative inquiry where the narrator is at the centre, being an active agent inseparable from the phenomenon studied (Spector-Mersel, 2010).…”