This two-year ethnographic case study critically examines the language educators use to describe students with disabilities who are considered to present challenging behaviors in one classroom. Focusing on the language and practices used by one special education teacher and three teaching assistants, this paper explores how educators respond to students’ behaviors by analyzing educators’ utterances and the implication of such use for the education of the students. Using critical discourse analysis, this paper highlights how educators’ language in the classroom reflects a discourse of expectations that is based on various social standards and pressures that educators have to juggle. Educators expressed academic and behavioral standards by comparing students’ performance to the expected norm as well as through comparisons between students. Based on such comparisons, some students were constructed as always lacking and ultimately defined by the adjectives originally used to describe them. Students were perceived to embody defiance or smartness, the characteristics by which they were defined. 1. Introduction From a young age, students’ behavior and academic achievement are used to determine not just services for which they are eligible but also placement and discipline methods used to respond to their behaviors. Students with more significant needs and who display behaviors that can be understood as disruptive tend to spend less time in general education [1]. The attribution of behavior problems to students, especially students labeled as having a disability, becomes an important issue because it can determine teacher expectations, students’ placement, and the quality of education that the student will receive. The judgment of behaviors and what constitutes a behavior challenge, problem, or issue is historically, contextually, and culturally dependent, which means that it is socially constructed [2]. According to traditional special education, students with disabilities and challenging behaviors are believed to embody inherent deficits located in them because they do not comply with school rules, especially the rules established for social environments and relationships in the classroom. In this paper, students’ uncompliant behaviors interchangebly labeled behavior issues, behavior problems, challenging behavior, or defiant behavior are understood as a social construct. The present study critically examines the informal labeling of students with disabilities based on their behaviors in a kindergarten classroom and its consequences for their education. The
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