Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Monograph

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Education

Supervisor

Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw

Abstract

Today, disabled children have access to child care programs, but access is provisional, not rights based. This is a study of what happened to push children with disabilities into a subordinate concern when, in 1994, Ontario’s Group K hospital programs for children with disabilities were closed and children were pointed toward inclusive child care instead. This critical discourse analysis of four early childhood education and care (ECEC) documents uses Thomas Hobbes’s social contract theory to show how ECEC planning and system design that excluded disabled children created further disabling conditions for children already experiencing impairment. The study asks: (1) How was children’s disability responded to in ECEC at a time of transition in social policy and administration in children’s programs? (2) What might Hobbes’s social contract theory contribute to a study of ECEC inclusion to understand how disability was produced? (3) How did discourses produce situations of exclusion, separation, and disappearance for children with disabilities in inclusive ECEC? (4) How was ECEC set up to fail children with disabilities by the Ontario government through its poor planning and child care system design? This study finds that two ECEC discourses—disability is a natural phenomenon of the body and children are children first—prioritize the nondisabled child and make children with disabilities disappear, in and from ECEC. Therapy discourses, originally of medicine but strengthened in the ambiguous governing infrastructure of ECEC in which disability is represented as weakness and vulnerability, are found to subordinate children with disabilities while also leaving educators with a great deal of unanticipated, invisible work. In 1994, the conditions of policy, planning, and available information had the potential to move ECEC into a better system for children with disabilities; however, this study concludes that the path that was taken instead—to not develop good policies and plans for disability in ECEC—meant that the conditions whereby children with disabilities are subordinate, less than, and not fully human were locked into ECEC. Now, the development of a Canada Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system presents an opportunity to change the discourses that created the disabled subject in ECEC in 1994. A clear statement about disabled children as an assumed focus for all ECEC systems, including CWELCC, could shift the rhetoric of inclusion that has been so limiting to ECEC in Ontario since 1994.

Summary for Lay Audience

Disabled children have access to early childhood education and care programs (ECEC), but access is not guaranteed. In this study, I discuss how children with disabilities are disadvantaged by the social, political, and physical environments of ECEC. In other words, I examine how “disability” is produced—or brought about by practices and norms of ECEC. This is a study of what happened to children with disabilities when, in 1994, Ontario’s Group K hospital programs for children with disabilities were closed and children were pointed toward inclusive ECEC instead. This study uses Thomas Hobbes’s social contract theory to show how disabled children were made to disappear in, and from, ECEC in 1994. When people with disabilities are treated differently than people without disabilities, it creates impressions of what it means to “belong” in society. The lack of planning for children with disabilities in ECEC sent a message that they do not belong in ECEC. I show how the lack of planning and ambiguous governing infrastructure of ECEC that existed in 1994 also reinforced the perception that disability means “weakness” and “vulnerability.” Because of the underdeveloped planning and organization of ECEC for effectively including children with disabilities in 1994, children with disabilities were invited to come to child care, but the invitation was conditional. Children with disabilities faced extra barriers to participate in ECEC compared to children without disabilities. In 1994, the conditions of policy, planning, and available information had the potential to make ECEC into a better system for children with disabilities. This study concludes that the path that was taken instead—to not develop good policies and plans for disability in ECEC—meant that the conditions whereby children with disabilities are subordinate, less than, and not fully human were locked into ECEC. Now, the development of a Canada Wide Early Learning and Child Care system presents an opportunity to change the way children with disabilities are included in ECEC. What is needed is a clear statement about disabled children as an assumed focus for all ECEC systems.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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