The core category is the only category that is not related to only one of the interview groups (children, parents, teachers). It developed from the whole body of interviews with children, parents and teachers. Feeling like a family describes a process in which the participants develop a sense of belonging. This indicates that especially aspects of the children’s category “question of belonging” are reflected in the core category. The expressions “feeling like a family”, “being part of the family”, “familiarity” or “accepting the child with a disability in the family” are mentioned in the chapters above (highlighted in pink in the network views), sometimes as a property or consequence of a certain category. This was part of the process that finally identified feeling like a family and raised it to the level of a core category. Furthermore, it shows that this process developed to be the core category, as it is related not only to the question of belonging but to all other categories as well. In this way, the developed categories become subcategories for the latter:

Subcategories (SC)

Core category

Developing a positive self-concept

Feeling like a family

Question of belonging

Establishing knowledge about the child and education

“The walk of shame”

Parental support

Establishing relationships

Quality of education

Commitment and motivation

Types of “Feeling Like a Family”

There are important differences in feeling like a family comparing parents and teachers on the one hand and children on the other. These differences are exemplified in the following.

Feeling Like a Family Within the Closer Family

The children’s feeling like a family is usually related to their closer family, to receiving support and supporting. It is about the matter of course that children take care of their aging parents in Ethiopia. Hence, it is also about duties and responsibilities within a family and about “being part of the family”.Footnote 1 Related to school, it could be observed that children seemed to benefit from the school in more ways than expected (e.g. getting education, being able to participate, gaining more self-esteem). The values that they gained from attending a school were more than that. In the interviews it became clear that the majority of the children preferred to be at school than to be at home. This was related to friends, possibilities to play and space to play. Further arguments were that it was boring at home. However, the respective statements of the children were not related to feeling like a family. It was rather the parents who made such statements: “Any way she is called teacher B. She is her second mother” (Almaz, mother).

The different types of feeling like a family led to different types of “developing a sense of belonging”. For the children developing a sense of belonging was related to their place in society, the community and their family. Hence, it was also related to a more profound process in which identity and concept of self were influenced to a big extent. This is relevant especially regarding the already discussed aspects of “being able to help” (support the family) and thereby “becoming a valued member of society”. This is a clear link to the capability approach, as capabilities are described as “a person’s real freedoms or opportunities to achieve functionings” (Robeyns 2011) and functionings as “beings and doings” of a person (Robeyns 2011). Being able to help is one of the functionings that can be achieved by having the freedom and opportunity to receive quality education.

Feeling Like a Family Within the School Community

For the parents, the core category “feeling like a family” was related mainly to the teachers and the school. It gave them a feeling of being understood and valued especially after they had to deal with guilt and shame regarding the disability of their child.

Y::

Do you have anything else to say, let’s say, about the teachers? Can you talk about the relations with the teachers?

B::

We are like brothers and sisters with the teachers. I am very close with them. (Beyene, mother)

It was something very valuable for the parents to feel like a family in relation with the school; for them it meant getting back respect, and additionally they “got back” their child as one to be proud of.

From the teachers’ perspective, the feeling like a family was connected to communication and support in relation to parents and children. In cases where this feeling prevailed, responsibilities were taken on with more commitment.

When I say it’s the special nature of the school, it’s only because of the support, only because of dependence of the children and the families on the school. This is what the situation has created. And because of this also, we don’t consider ourselves – I think I’ve cited this somewhere in the course of our interview – that we feel like a family, not only as a teacher. It doesn’t mean every teacher is a family, or feels like a father or mother, but in our case, we have that feeling. There are children who do not have mother and father; there are children who do not have a father, in most cases. So, this is what they are lacking. And for their education to be fruitful some of us have to feel as if we were trying to fill that gap. (Temesgen expert and teacher)

In this particular case, the teachers were very close to the families and they took on a lot of responsibility. However, also the children that were interviewed at this school did not speak about teachers in such terms. This makes it clear again that the feeling like a family in schools was one-sided regarding teachers and children and mutual only between parents and teachers. Yet, it can be assumed that it was also mutual between parents and children if it exists within the family, though this was not an issue in the interviews. The following figure illustrates through which relations feeling like a family comes into effect (Fig. 6.1).

Fig. 6.1
figure 1

Relations within the core category feeling like a family

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Here too, it can be stated that education is the main capability for reaching states of beings and doings that are valued by the participants. In this case it would be “feeling like a family” as a general category. To be more precise, the functioning that could be reached could be described as gaining respect, being accepted, being taken seriously regarding one’s problems and, finally, being part of a community and leaving stigma and prejudice behind.

The Meaning of Family

Feeling like a family was related to aspects of value, responsibility, reliability and mutual understanding. It provided the people involved with a feeling of belonging. Furthermore, family can be defined as something that is deep-seated within societal and cultural structures in Ethiopia. It is a reliable entity which supports the people who are part of it. In regard to children with disabilities, the entity of the family is challenged, as disability is not accepted in society as something “normal”. The challenge lies in the family unit, which is highly valued by society, and that has to integrate a socially stigmatised child. Here the conflict to which especially parents are exposed at the beginning becomes clear.

After concluding the collection of data, we met up with our Ethiopian colleagues from the language department at AAU, who were translating our interviews. It was very interesting and they told us that they really liked the research because it was so exciting to read the interviews. They were impressed by how much some parents cared about their children and then again by how sad and depressed some of the parents were. (Researcher’s research diary, phase 3)

For children it means they have to work towards being accepted in society. The entity of the family is especially meaningful in this regard, as it is in the family where children can prove best that they are valuable members of society by being able to support their parents, which is of great importance for the society in general.

For the teachers, their feeling of being a family with parents and students meant receiving them with open arms in contrast to the prevailing attitudes in society. Teachers are freeFootnote 2 to decide whether or not to welcome parents and their children with disabilities, even after they are accepted at school. In other words, the teacher has to accept the child with a disability in his/her classroom if the principal decides to accept them. However, teachers cannot be forced to give them special attention and support. This means that it is an even more meaningful step from the societal point of view if teachers welcome children with disabilities and their parents as parts of their family because there is no family relation that forces them to. Both types of feeling like a family, in the families themselves and in the “school-families”, require effort on the part of the people involved. Usually these efforts involve demonstrating a change in attitude towards disability. The following network view shows the properties of the core category as well as the items that are listed in earlier network views and are related to the core category.

Properties of “Feeling Like a Family”

Network View 6.1
figure 2

Properties of feeling like a family

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This network view shows the most essential properties of the core category feeling like a family (grey items). The items in pink are the ones that are listed in the other network views of the earlier categories (in brackets). Their characteristic in relation to the respective category is indicated at the beginning (PROP = property, CONS = consequence, SC = subcategory, etc.). If there is no relation indicated, it was added to the category without a defined characteristic.

Regarding the properties of the core category, the left-hand side shows the efforts on the part of the participants that are necessary for establishing a feeling like a family. The right-hand side of the network view shows aspects that were gained by the participants through living the feeling like a family. The property that is placed between the two sides emphasises the significance which “family” has for the participants and for society as whole. Finally, all the properties of the core category can be identified as being part of the consequence “developing a sense of belonging”.

The fact that feeling like a family was more likely in special settings than in integrative settings can be related to the difficult conditions in the integrative settings. These were found in governmental schools that had to struggle much more with aspects like resources and class size than schools supported by the church (like school E, which had an integrative setting but showed evidence of feeling like a family amongst the participants). However, special settings that were attached to governmental schools also had problems related to material, teacher-to-student ratio and further support. Yet, the teachers developed more commitment as they had a clear task and focus on children with disabilities in their work. Furthermore, the size of the special settings (in this case special classes) was smaller compared to the rest of the school (though still too big), and consequently the feeling of being a community was developed more easily, as the people were more likely to know each other. In this context, the following quotation is very interesting, as it is of a mother of a boy with an intellectual disability who was integrated in a regular class after being in the special unit for some years: “In fact, we had a good relationship when he was in the special unit. They called me and we discussed as a family. The others also call me but it is not like the others. There we had a good relationship” (Bamlak, mother). This case describes the difference regarding a feeling of belonging between special setting and integrative setting.

It is interesting that during the first steps of analysing the data, “developing a sense of belonging” seemed to become relevant only for the children. It became evident only by further engaging with the categories that this was also an issue for the other interview groups.

The Process

I mentioned before that the core category feeling like a family describes a process that eventually leads to developing a sense of belonging. This process has certain stages that enable the people involved to develop a feeling like a family. In this respect, it has to be considered that this process is different for every person. However, there were certain similarities within the individual groups. The group of parents, the group of teachers and the group of children each had similar issues. The categories that developed during the process of analysis contain certain aspects that indicate individual steps within the process towards feeling like a family and the consequent development of a sense of belonging. This means that the parents first of all had to establish knowledge about their child and education in general; this again accelerated the walk of shame that led to a change in attitude. It was only then that parents got actively involved in issues related to their child and education, and parental support started to come into effect (even though parental support, which is not related to education, can already be found before the child’s access to school). Without a change in attitude and parental involvement, the feeling like a family at school cannot develop and neither can a sense of belonging. This means that the parents cannot establish a relationship with, and interest in, the school and the teachers and thus a feeling like a family with them, if they do not have a positive attitude towards their child with a disability and interest in his/her education. By going through the process of changing attitudes, the parents supported their children on their way towards being educated. At the same time, the parents developed a sense of belonging towards the teachers and the school.

From the teachers’ perspective, the situation was different in many aspects. As mentioned earlier, in many cases the teachers were unmotivated or frustrated because they had not chosen to become a teacher in the first place or because the circumstances were counteracting their efforts to provide quality education for the children. Teachers who developed a feeling like a family in the schools were much more motivated and committed to their profession. Therefore, the sense of belonging that resulted from this process can be interpreted as a feeling of belonging to their profession. Hence, by establishing relationships, for example, with the parents, a first approach towards more commitment and engagement was made by the teachers, thus creating a feeling like a family. Furthermore, quality education illustrates problematic aspects that were tried to be solved by communicating with people from within the school as an institution, including parents. In this respect, a feeling like a family supports the process of finding solutions. It encourages the teachers to strive for the goal of giving quality education to the children. This becomes especially visible through the category of commitment and motivation. In other words, engagement on the teachers’ part in cooperating with the families but also with colleagues can lead to a positive basis that might give them motivation and a feeling of belonging to their profession. Where this was the case, it supported the education for children with disabilities.

As regards children, the process that they went through started with the attribution of a disability. Being identified as a child with a disability, education was usually not one of the first considerations of the parents. Instead, the opinion that children with disabilities were not able to learn predominated. Furthermore, in many cases, access to school was denied by the schools or not possible due to various environmental factors (distance, physical accessibility, etc.). Therefore, the mere possibility of attending a school supported the development of a positive self-concept, as it constituted one step towards being integrated in society. However, the question of belonging is not answered by that. The children with disabilities had to find their place in society as they experienced exclusion in many areas of their life. For them, the feeling like a family constituted a possibility to become a valued member in society through education. With the vision in mind that education would enable them to support their families later, feeling like a family was a motor to reach their goal of being able to support their families and consequently develop a sense of belonging by defining their place in society. Thereby, other visions like becoming teachers and doctors also gained meaning, as those are professions that help and support people and hence society. Even though teachers are not highly valued in society, the children assigned the profession a deeper meaning. This is not surprising, as they saw the solution for their situation of exclusion in receiving education. Yet, the process which was started by feeling like a family for the children did not stop at school, as it did for parents and teachers.

In summary, three processes can be observed: the children’s, the parents’ and the teachers’ process towards developing a sense of belonging. Additionally this sense of belonging had different meanings. For the parents it seemed to be very important to have this contact in order to feel respected and accepted. For the teachers it was important regarding their profession. And for the children it was about their future life. This means that the parents and teachers were able to put more effort towards supporting the children with disabilities from their respective positions, as they were strengthened by the feeling like a family.

Having exemplified the main aspects of the core category, the following chapter organises the elaborated content and structures it towards a comprehensive theory of “developing a sense of belonging”.