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Disability Studies for Teachers

Abstract:: This document introduces the field and resources of Diability Studies for interested teachers.Disability Studies for Teachers is a web-based resource for teachers who want to introduce students in social studies, history, literature, and related subjects in grades 6-12 to disability studies and disability history. Resources on this site also can be adapted for use in postsecondary education. The project prepares lesson plans, essays, and teaching materials. It also draws on and contains links to other materials found on public educational, disability, and history websites. The project is based on a disability studies perspective. Disability studies refers generally to the examination of disability as a social, cultural, and political phenomenon. In contrast to clinical, medical, or educational approaches to disability, disability studies focuses on how disability is defined and represented in society. From this perspective, disability is not a characteristic that exists in the person so defined, but a construct that finds its meaning in social and cultural context.

Disability and Social Change A South African Agenda

Abstract:: This powerful volume represents the broadest engagement with disability issues in South Africa yet. Themes include: theoretical approaches to and representations of disability, governmental and civil society responses to disability, aspects of education as these pertain to the oppression, liberation of disabled people, social security for disabled people, the complex politics permeating service, provision relationships and consideration of disability in relation to human spaces, physical, economic and philosophical. Noteworthy, is the inclusivity of its nearly fifty contributors, many of whom write both as disabled South Africans and as educators, , linguists, psychologists, human rights activists, entrepreneurs, mental health practitioners, academics, and NGO and government officials. Equally stimulating is the range of writing styles, including interviews, a provocatively stark contrasting of voices in a chapter on Psychiatric Disability and Social Change, various well-crafted articles on theoretical issues, and the autobiographical style of many of the contributions. Firmly located within the social model of disability, this collection will resonate powerfully with contemporary thinking and research in the disability field and will set the benchmark for cutting-edge debates in a transforming South Africa.

Abstract:: Over the past three decades, the discipline of Disability Studies has emerged as an independent field within the social science research and theoretical arena. Questions surrounding the nature and origin of oppressive societal responses to impairment - ranging from service installations to bureaucratic policies, linguistic conventions to exclusionary practices - are the primary concern of the field. Disability Studies attempts to examine and debunk the 'disabled' identity as one ascribed to individuals arbitrarily, yet selectively, designated as disabled. Broadly, key theoretical positions within the field assert that the negatively valued and ascribed group identity of being disabled is one which serves, through the operation of complex ideological machinery, to justify and obscure the systematic exclusion of persons, so designated, from equitable participation in the production of culture. This study looks at dynamics of human rights and disability within higher education institutions from this perspective.