The Making of ADHD: A Comparative Content Analysis of Teachers’ and Doctors’ Worldviews

Dominik Robin; Michael Gemperle; Michael von Rhein; Frank Wieber; Sandra Hotz

doi:10.2478/sjs-2022-0014

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The Making of ADHD: A Comparative Content Analysis of Teachers’ and Doctors’ Worldviews

Swiss Journal of Sociology

Volume 48 (2022): Issue 2 (July 2022)

By: Dominik Robin, Michael Gemperle, Michael von Rhein, Frank Wieber and Sandra Hotz

Open Access

|Jul 2022

Abstract

Little is known about how teachers and doctors make sense of ADHD. Drawing on a corpus of online accounts, we reconstructed their worldviews with a qualitative analysis. While both professional groups referred to a male troublemaker and to the German literary figure of the Fidgety Phil, they also expressed rival expert claims. Doctors represented the scientific authority in labeling and diagnosing ADHD, whereas teachers attached objective meaning to the medical judgement by pathologizing deviant behavior and justifying measures of control.

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