Stars are not Born: An Interpretive Approach to the Politics of Disability

The politics of disability are usually interpreted as attempts to influence government policy in the direction of reducing the negative effects of impairment. This paper enlarges that conventional notion to include attention to how the disabled subject is produced by the discursive practices within which disability is administered.

A summary of epistemological perspectives represented by contemporary social thought dealing with disability opens the discussion. Foucault's work is presented as the basis for interpreting recent social science literature on disability from a viewpoint which is sensitive to variations in epistemological presuppositions in that literature and to the political implications of each mode of research for the administration and treatment of disability.

A concluding section contains speculation on forms of political action which are relevant to the politics of disability at the constitutive level.     

How experiential education relates to college goals and objectives

Goals and undergraduate education objectives related to experiential learning were identified in college brochures and through interviews with selected college personnel. All college faculty were mailed questionnaires asking the extent of their agreement with the goals and objectives and their opinion as to the learning environment most conducive to achieving these objectives.Lack of faculty agreement with experiential learning goals and faculty unwillingness to endorse off-campus learning experiences conflicted with the published philosophy of the college. A Guttman Scale constructed from faculty responses to goals showed that as the degree of abstraction of each goal increased, so did the degree of faculty agreement.Based on college goals, valid and reliable instruments were developed to determine students' attitudes about field experiences, and to assess performance in field placements. As amounts of fieldwork increased, students' attitudes about self became more positive, performances at field sites showed higher achievement, and understanding of college goal-related concepts increased. Any amount of fieldwork appeared to help focus students' professional goals.     

Child and adolescent bereavement

Clinical social workers in non-medical settings often are presented with child and adolescent clinets who are bereaved, or with adults who experienced the loss of a significant other in childhood or adolescence. This article attempts to pull together the most relevant and significant issues relating to loss in childhood and adolescence. It provides an overview of the theoretical and treatment issues that inform practice with clients who have sustained a significant loss during the pre-adult years. Case material provides an illustration of some of the issues as they appear in clinical practice.     

IS THERE MORE TO COUNTING THAN WHAT MEETS THE EYE? COMMENT ON SNYDER AND RICE

Snhyder and Rice (1994) comment that Shortz, Worthington, McCullough, DeVries, and Morrow (1994) failed to use sophisticated methods in their identification of prolific authors, institutions, and journals within the field of mari-tal therapy. This article is a response to Snyder and rice. We argue that Snyder and Rice's suggested methods emphasize a different research question that ouroriginal question, We investigated productivity of authous and institutions, not im-pact of scholars on the fiels of marital therapy. furthermore, we demonstrate that the results obtained from Snyder and Rice's suggested methodologies are nor appreciably different from our original results.