‘I’m Dyslexic but What Does That Even Mean?’: Young People’s Experiences of Dyslexia Support Interventions in Mainstream Classrooms

In England, under the Children and Families Act 2014, and the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Code of Practice: 0–25 years, the needs of most young people with SEND are expected to be met within the mainstream classroom. A large proportion of young people with SEND have dyslexia or another specific learning difficulty. In this study, the experiences of young people with dyslexia at a mainstream secondary school in south-west England were studied during the first stages of the implementation of this framework via data from observations, focus groups and interviews involving nine young people aged 11–14. Through a Bourdieu-informed ethnography underpinned by Jenkins’ ‘Orders of Interaction,’ it was found that young people’s conceptualisation of their own dyslexia underpinned their interactions with others but was also influenced by those interactions. Young people’s interactions and ‘agentic capacity’ was limited by their status as ‘children’ within the field of education.