Reinterpreting learning difficulty: a professional and personal challenge?

Inglis, Pamela (2013) Reinterpreting learning difficulty: a professional and personal challenge? Disability & Society, 28 (3). pp. 423-426. ISSN 0968-7599

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Abstract

I want to explore in this article the ways in which people with a learning difficulty are constructed in a number of ways as disabled, as limited, as being special, and so on. Constructions can also be utilised for different purposes – to ensure that they have effective levels of support and to elevate the status of people with a learning difficulty. Positive constructs may articulate an ‘accentuation of the positive’ as Goodley and Armstrong prescribed. However, whilst I agree with this sentiment, one echoed in Swain and French’s important formulation of an affirmative model of disability, and one that I have also espoused, professionally I also feel that my experience of working with people with learning difficulties makes me suspicious of generalised statements about people, even those deemed positive. This may be especially true in a period of financial rationalisation, where such constructs may seem inevitable in the fight for effective support for people with a learning difficulty.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	disability, learning difficulty, disabled constructions, professionals
Subjects:	L300 Sociology
Department:	Faculties > Health and Life Sciences > Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing
Depositing User:	Ellen Cole
Date Deposited:	19 Apr 2013 11:26
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2019 14:37
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/12322

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