Positioning of Korean Immigrant Mothers of Children with Disabilities

Abstract

This study examines the ways in which Korean immigrant mothers take up roles to position themselves while they engage in their children’s education across a wide range of settings—academic, social, and linguistic. Data sources included interviews with four Korean mothers, home and community observations, and field notes. Positioning theory is a research approach that provides a useful analytic means for understanding positioning of Korean immigrant mothers as being parents of children with disabilities attending American schools. The results demonstrate that Korean immigrant mothers seek to learn how to be supportive mothers of children with disabilities by negotiating and facilitating contextual affordances and limitations between home, school, and community in order to obtain valuable potential resources for their children’s linguistic repertories and social skill development and their future success.