Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and learning difficulties – children in the diagnostic process

Abstract

In everyday school life, in lessons, parent-teacher meetings, and teacher conferences, a “diagnostic type” is constructed around students with learning difficulties and learning problems. It is determined by a logic of defect or deficit requiring medical treatment. Students are classified as carriers of ADHD. From the perspective of the Cultural-Historical School, my empirical study investigates how, and through which mechanisms, schools in Brazil themselves contribute to transferring problems and difficulties that may arise only within the logic of the institution into the domain of medicine. The mechanisms of school-internal “diagnostic procedures” and their effects on families and students are at the center of my research interest.