Freedom Through Flight: Performing a Counter-Narrative of Disability

This project explores how discourses of difference sustain the separation of people with disabilities from community life and highlights the efforts of one organization, Passion Works, as members perform a counter-narrative of disability. Passion Works is a non-profit organization housed within a sheltered workshop sponsored by its local county board of mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and provides innovative employment opportunities by supporting artistic collaborations between individuals with and without disabilities. Our ethnographic portrayal is based on our experiences as participant observers, narratives performed in daily routines and collected through in-depth interviews with staff artists, and document analysis. We unpack how artists perform a counter-narrative of freedom through flight that fosters both autonomy and connection, allows artists to accomplish mind and body, and provides opportunities for artists to perform the personal in the public sphere.     

Constructing impairment and disability in school reading schemes

This paper examines the cultural construction of disability detailed within school reading schemes. The study by the employment of proto-text analysis followed the ‘reading journeys’ that a four- and five-year-old child experienced during the course of one academic year. The study examined 61 reading books that contained 2199 illustrations, 100 photographs and 1006 pages of text. The major finding of the research is that the reading schemes contained a limited construction of disability and one that was contextualised within medical deficit and narrative prosthesis. The research concludes that school reading schemes are potentially acting as a Trojan horse to introduce a page thin hegemonic that inculcates young children into the systems of dominance and ‘ableist’ agendas which are seemingly replete in our society.     

Children with behavioral, non-behavioral, and multiple disabilities, and the risk of out-of-home placement disruption

Objective

This study examined the relative risk of placement disruption for 3-10 year-old children placed in out-of-home care based on the biological relatedness of the placement caregiver and child disability status: no disability, a non-behavioral disability only, a behavioral disability only, or both a non-behavioral and behavioral disability.

Methods

Data were used from the baseline and 36 month follow-up of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, a national probability study of children investigated for child abuse and neglect in the United States. Disability status was derived using several different nationally-normed measures of language development, daily-living skills, social skills, and behavioral problems.

Results

Around 1 in 4 children placed in out-of-home care experienced a disruption. Placement with kin decreased the likelihood of disruption for a majority of children, and children with different types of disabilities were no more or less likely to disrupt in kinship care compared to children with no disability. Older children with a behavioral disability only or both a non-behavioral and behavioral disability were more likely to disrupt compared to younger regardless of placement.

Conclusion

The study findings suggest that maltreated children placed with kin will be afforded the same stability provided to children without a disability.     

Growing in Humanity: On Vulnerability,Capacitation, and Encounter in Religious Education: A Christian Practical Theological Approach

This article focuses on how the conversation on vulnerability between theologies of disability and religious education (RE) promotes encounter between pupils of different abilities. I argue that talking about the gift of vulnerability in RE can help pupils of different abilities perceive each other as full human beings. Indeed, RE can empower students regardless of their abilities, if it builds on their vulnerability to promote their ability to act. In order to achieve this I suggest a “capacitating” reading of biblical narratives in RE to counter able-bodied beliefs about normalcy and “perfection.”     

Socio-Economic Gradients and Disability During The Transition to Young Adulthood: A Longitudinal Survey and Register Study in Norway

The study aimed to investigate trends and explanatory factors for socio-economic inequalities associated with disability during the transition to young adulthood. A sample of 2606 participants (56% females and 44% males) was prospectively followed from adolescence to young adulthood. Disability status, age, gender, mental health problems, scholastic competence and social acceptance were measured from the longitudinal survey Young in Norway, while socio-economic indicators such as participants’ and their parents’ levels of education, annual income, unemployment and welfare benefits were extracted from the National Population Register in Norway. Regression models were applied to estimate associations between disability and socio-economic outcomes. The findings show that disabled adolescents have a significantly greater risk of achieving lower levels of education and are unemployed and over-represented in welfare benefits during the transition to young adulthood. Most of these associations between disability and socio-economic outcomes were explained by mental wellbeing and self-perceptions. The study suggests that interventions addressing mental wellbeing and social competence might reduce the development of socio-economic inequalities among young people with disability.     

‘It's actually very normal that I'm different’. How physically disabled youth discursively construct and position their body/self

In this paper, we explore how physically disabled youth who participate in mainstream education discursively construct and position themselves in relation to dominant discourses about sport and physicality that mark their bodies as ‘abnormal’ and ‘deviant’. We employ a feminist poststructuralist perspective to analyze the narratives about sport, physical education (PE), the body and self of four physically disabled Dutch youngsters. Our results indicate that although dominant societal discourses about sport and physicality construct disabled bodies as deviant, vulnerable and lacking and the disabled as ‘abnormal’, these youth constructed the self as ‘normal’. However, they did so in different ways. One of the interviewees used the alternative discourse ‘everyone is different, everyone is normal’ to position her disabled self as different and normal simultaneously. Hereby she resisted dominant notions about the abled body embedded in discourses about sport and physicality. This act of resistance enabled her to accept her disability as part of her self. Others normalized their disabled bodies by attempting to pass as able-bodied. They tried to minimize and/or hide their disability and in this manner reproduced ableist discourses about sport and physicality. Our interviewees also engaged in various performative acts of resistance. They challenged these dominant discourses by strategically using the possibilities a different/disabled self provided them. Overall the data indicate the important role that visible signifiers of disability played in the exclusionary practices that these disabled youth encountered and the subject positions they could claim. Since alternative constructions and positionings regarding the abled/normal body suggest ways in which the dominance of ableism may be disrupted, we conclude with an emphasis on the need for future research that explores such alternatives.     

Disability and education: The longest road to inclusion

Children with disabilities are one of the many groups of children still not enrolled in primary education in developing countries. However, their educational exclusion and right to education are now receiving more policy attention. This paper reviews some of the key issues and challenges in relation to disability, education and development: definitions and data, policies, service delivery and finance, and capacity development. Drawing on a review of education sector planning and provision in 28 developing countries and other literature, the paper makes comparative reference to policy and practice in a number of developed and developing country contexts.     

Psychosocial Determinants of Parental Support Behaviours Enabling Sport Participation among Children with a Physical Impairment: A literature review and research agenda

Children with physical impairments have low rates of physical activity when compared to children without impairments. Given the benefits that result from sport, improving participation rates among children with physical impairments is essential. Parents have a critical role in supporting their child’s involvement in sport. The purpose of this article was to review research regarding psychosocial factors that determine parental support of sport participation for their child with a physical impairment, and present recommendations for future research. This will be done in two parts: first, a critical investigation of current literature using the Health Action Process Approach as a framework; and second, the presentation of a research agenda. By meeting our recommendations and developing knowledge on the determinants of parents’ decision to promote sport for their child with a physical impairment, researchers could fill gaps in the literature and may aid in improving sport participation for children with physical impairments.     

Understanding the factors that shape dispositions toward students with disabilities: a case study of three general education pre-service teachers

Presently, there is limited research that explores how the nature of pre-service teachers’ prior experience informs their dispositional development, and it has yet to be determined whether the pedagogical needs of these prospective teachers vary based on their level of prior exposure. This qualitative case study examines the dispositions of three pre-service teachers enrolled in a year-long graduate education programme in the United States and considers the role that prior experience plays in their dispositional development. Findings from this study reveal that participants’ dispositions appear to be affected more significantly by coursework and fieldwork than by prior experience, and the culture of the school plays a critical role in a pre-service teachers’ dispositional development. This study addresses gaps in current research by offering insight into the nuanced nature of pre-service teachers’ dispositional development.     

A battery of strength tests for evidence-based classification in Para swimming

This study examined the validity of isometric strength tests for evidence-based classification in Para swimming. Thirty non-disabled participants and forty-two Para swimmers with physical impairment completed an isometric strength test battery designed to explain activity limitation in the freestyle discipline. Measures pertaining to dominant and non-dominant limb strength and symmetry were derived from four strength tests that were found to be reliable in a cohort of non-disabled participants (ICC = 0.85–0.97; CV = 6.4–9.1%). Para swimmers had lower scores in strength tests compared with non-disabled participants (d = 0.14–1.00) and the strength test battery successfully classified 95% of Para swimmers with physical impairment using random forest algorithm. Most of the strength measures had low to moderate correlations (r = 0.32 to 0.53; p ≤ 0.05) with maximal freestyle swim speed in Para swimmers. Although, fewer correlations were found when Para swimmers with hypertonia or impaired muscle power were analysed independently, highlighting the impairment-specific nature of activity limitation in Para swimming. Collectively, the strength test battery has utility in Para swimming classification to infer loss of strength in Para swimmers, guide minimum eligibility criteria, and to define the impact that strength impairment has on Para swimming performance.