Reinterpreting learning difficulty: a professional and personal challenge? |
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Authors: | Pamela Anne Inglis |
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Institution: | Faculty of Health and Life Sciences , Northumbria University , Newcastle upon Tyne , UK |
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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. |
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Keywords: | disability learning difficulty disabled constructions professionals |
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