Abstract:
This study examined how female educators with AD/HD experience teaching, specifically managing their classroom, interacting with colleagues, administrators, and parents, and interact socially with colleagues. Brock (2008) is the only study that specifically researching teachers with AD/HD, but her study does not investigate how female educators changed after being diagnosed with AD/HD.
I performed a hybrid study using a basic descriptive study and autoethnography. For this study, I posed three research questions: (1) how does a diagnosis of AD/HD as an adult impact a female educator’s perception of her ability to manage a classroom learning environment, (2) how does a diagnosis of AD/HD as an adult impact a female educator’s perception of her ability to professionally communicate student progress to colleagues, administrators, and parents, and (3) how does a diagnosis of AD/HD as an adult effect a female educator’s perception of her ability to interact socially with colleagues and support personnel? To answer these questions, I conducted a three-part life story interview (Atkinson, 2002). The first round of coding was performed using Emotion coding and the second round of coding was performed using Pattern coding (Saldana, 2016). I used these coding methods to analyze my participants’ interview data and answer my research questions.
After analyzing the data, I found multiple ranges of emotions and patterns of behavior. The ranges of emotions included positive, negative, and neutral. The patterns of behavior I identified were resilience and leveraging AD/HD. After performing a comparative analysis, I found that my participants had similar experiences.