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"Being Grown": How Adolescent Girls With Disabilities Narrate Self-Determination And Transitions, Danielle Cowley

Teaching and Leadership - Dissertations

Across the United States young women with disabilities are experiencing economic and educational disadvantages. Although post-school outcomes have shown improvement, young women continue to experience high unemployment rates, low wages, and high rates of poverty. In this study, I explore the experiences of four teenage girls who have been labeled as having learning disabilities and intellectual disabilities. Through in-depth interviews, supported collage making, document review, and the AIR Self-Determination Scale, I examine how they experience girlhood, schooling, and transitions. I consider the ways in which adolescent girls with disabilities negotiate special education, social relationships, and the salient and permeable borders …