Concepts And Definitions Of Disability Essay Example for Free

Concepts And Definitions Of Disability EssayThe contemporary conception of impairment proposed in the WHO transnational Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) views disability as an umbrella circumstance for impairments, activity limitations and booking restrictions. Disability is the interaction between individuals with a wellness condition (e.g. cerebral palsy, Down syndrome or depression) and personal and environmental factors (e.g. negative attitudes, remote transportation, or limited social supports). Long ago there was great confusion everyplace the meaning of equipment casualty such(prenominal) as impairment, strangle, or disability. Then, in 1980, the WHO resultd great service by offering a clear appreciateion of thinking about it all in a little book cal take International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and disabilitys. All these terms refer to the consequences of disease, and consider the consequences at different levels. The disease produces around form of pathology, and then the individual may wrick aware of this they experience symptoms. Later, the performance or behaviour of the person may be affected, and because of this the person may suffer consequences such as being futile to work.In this general scenario, Impairment was specify as any loss or ab normality of psychological, physiological, or anatomical structure or function. Impairment is a deviation from normal organ function it may be visible or invisible (screening tests generally seek to identify impairments). Disability was defined as any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a homo being. Impairment does non necessarily lead to a disability, for the impairment may be corrected. I am, for example, wearing eye glasses, but do not ob servicing that any disability arises from my impaired vision.A disability refers to the function o f the individual (rather than of an organ, as with impairment). In turn, Handicap was defined as a disadvantage for a assumption individual, resulting from impairment or a disability that limits or pr as yetts the fulfillment of a usage that is normal (depending on age, sex, and social and cultural factors) for that individual. Handicap considers the persons compositionicipation in their social context. For example, if there is a wheel-chair access ramp at work, a dis fitd person may not be handicapped in coming to work there. Here are some examplesImpairment Speech production Disability Speaking clearly enough to be understood Handicap Communication I Hearing D Understanding H CommunicationI Vision D Seeing H OrientationI take control, balance, joint stiffness D Dressing, feeding, walking H Independence, mobility I Affective, cognitive limitations D Behaving, interacting, supporting H Social interaction, reasonableness Here is a plot that suggests possible paral lels between the impairment, disability handicap terzetto, and the disease, illness and sickness triad. (The squiggly arrows are intended to indicate a rough correspondence)Patients do not arrest to their physicians to find out what ICD code they comport, they come to get help for what is b early(a)ing them. A Positive Perspective? Quality of Life and the International Classification of Function The decoct on disability takes a somewhat negative approach to health, perhaps not unreasonable since doctors are supposed to cure diseases. But starting in the 1980s clinicians began to set goals to achieve when the disease could not be cured, beyong merely controlling symptoms. The notion of Quality of Life gained prominence as a way to emphasize a cocksure perspective on health health as a capacity to function and to live, even if the patient has a chronic condition.A central aim of care was to enhance the shade of the patients function, and hence their ability to life as normal a life as possible, even if the disorder could not be cured. This notion was a further extension of handicap, covering maintenance of normal function, but adding psychological well-being and, if possible, positive feelings of engagement. Measurements of quality of life extend the disability focus beyond the ability to perform activities of daily living to include a broad range of functioning (work, home, play) and in addition the persons feelings of satisfaction and well-being. This is necessarily a qualitative and subjective concept, judged by the patient in terms of the extent to which they are able to do the things they wish to do. In this medical context, quality of life is distinct from wealth or possessions, and to amke this clear you may see the term health-related quality of life.Reflecting these evolving ideas, the WHO revised itsImpairment, Disability and Handicap triad in 2001, re-naming it the International Classification of Function (ICF). This classification system pr ovides codes for the complete range of functional states codes cover body structures and functions, impairments, activities and participation in society. The ICF excessively considers contextual factors that may influence activity levels, so function is viewed as an interaction between health conditions (a disease or injury) and the context in which the person lives (both personal environment and cultural norms relevant to the disease). It establishes a common language for describing functional states that can be used in comparing across diseases and countries. The ICF therefore uses positive language, so that activity and participation replace disability and handicap. The ICF is described on the WHO web site.Impairment, Disability and HandicapSheena L. Carter, Ph.D.The words impairment, disability, and handicap, are often used interchangeably. They have very different meanings, however. The differences in meaning are important for understanding the effects of neurological injury on development.The near commonly cited definitions are those provided by the World Health Organization (1980) in The International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and HandicapsImpairment any loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological or anatomical structure or function.Disability any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being.Handicap a disadvantage for a given individual that limits or prevents the fulfillment of a role that is normalAs traditionally used, impairment refers to a problem with a structure ororgan of the body disability is a functional limitation with regard to a concomitant activity and handicap refers to a disadvantage in filling a role in life relative to a peer group.Examples to illustrate the differences among the terms impairment, disability, and handicap.1. CP example David is a 4-yr.-old who has a form of cerebral palsy (CP) c alled spastic diplegia. Davids CP causes his legs to be stiff, tight, and difficult to come to. He cannot stand or walk.Impairment The inability to move the legs easily at the joints and inability to bear weight on the feet is an impairment. Without orthotics and surgery to release abnormally contracted muscles, Davids level of impairment may increase as imbalanced muscle contraction over a period of time can cause hip dislocation and deformed bone growth. No discussion may be currently available to lessen Davids impairment.Disability Davids inability to walk is a disability. His level of disability can be improved with carnal therapy and finical(prenominal)(a) equipment. For example, if he learns to use a walker, with braces, his level of disability will improve considerably.Handicap Davids cerebral palsy is handicapping to the extent that it prevents him from fulfilling a normal role at home, in preschool, and in the community. His level of handicap has been only very mild i n the early years as he has been well-supported to be able to play with other children, interact normally with family members and participate fully in family and community activities. As he gets older, his handicap will increase where certain sports and visible activities are considered normal activities for children of the same age.He has little handicap in his preschool classroom, though he needs some assistance to move about the classroom and from one activity to another outside the classroom. Appropriate services and equipment can reduce the extent to which cerebral palsy prevents David from fulfilling a normal role in the home, school and community as he grows.2. LD example Cindy is an 8-year-old who has extreme difficulty with cultivation ( disgusting dyslexia). She has good vision and hearing and scores well on tests of intelligence. She went to an polished preschool and several different special reading programs have been tried since early in kindergarten.Impairment While no brain injury or deformity has been identified, some impairment is presumed to exist in how Cindys brain puts together visual and auditory information. The impairment may be inability to associate sounds with symbols, for example.Disability In Cindys case, the inability to read is a disability. The disability can probably be improved by trying different learn methods and using those that seem most useful with Cindy. If the impairment can be explained, it may be possible to dramatically improve the disability by using a method of teaching that does not require skills that are impaired (That is, if the difficulty involves learning sounds for letters, a sight-reading approach can improve her level of disability).Handicap Cindy already experiences a handicap as compared with other children in her class at school, and she may fail third grade. Her condition will become more handicapping as she gets older if an effective approach is not found to improve her reading or to teach her t o compensate for her reading difficulties. Even if the level of disability stays severe (that is, she neer learns to read well), this will be less handicapping if she learns to tape lectures and read books on audiotapes. Using such approaches, even in elementary school, can prevent her reading disability from interfering with her progress in other academic areas (increasing her handicap).Gale Encyclopedia of EducationHistory of Special EducationTopHome Library History, governing Society Education EncyclopediaSpecial breeding, as its name suggests, is a specialized branch of fosterage. Claiming lineage to such persons as Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (1775 1838), the physician who tamed the infatuated boy of Aveyron, and Anne Sullivan Macy (1866 1936), the teacher who worked miracles with Helen Keller, special educators teach those students who have physical, cognitive, language, learning, sensory, and/or emotional abilities that deviate from those of the general race. Special educators provide instruction specifically tailored to pertain individualized needs, making program line available to students who otherwise would have limited access to education. In 2001, special education in the United States was serving over five million students. Although federally mandated special education is relatively new in the United States, students with disabilities have been present in every era and in every society.Historical records have tenaciously documented the most severe disabilities those that transcend task and setting. Itards description of the wild boy of Aveyron documents a variety of behaviors consistent with both mental retardation and behavioral disorders. Nineteenth-century reports of deviant behavior describe conditions that could easily be interpreted as severe mental retardation, autism, or schizophrenia. Milder forms of disability became apparent only after the advent of universal cosmos education. When literacy became a goal for all children, teachers began observing disabilities specific to task and setting that is, less severe disabilities.After decades of research and legislation, special education now provides services to students with varying degrees and forms of disabilities, including mental retardation, emotional disturbance, learning disabilities, speech-language (communication) disabilities, impaired hearing and deafness, low vision and blindness, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairments, and severe and multiple disabilities.Development of the Field of Special EducationAt its inception in the early nineteenth century, leading of social change set out to cure many ills of society. Physicians and clergy, including Itard, Edouard O. Seguin (1812 1880), Samuel Gridley Howe (1801 1876), and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787 1851), wanted to ameliorate the neglectful, often abusive treatment of individuals with disabilities. A rich writings describes the treatment provided to individuals with disabi lities in the 1800s They were often confined in jails and almshouses without decent food, clothing, personal hygiene, and exercise. During much of the nineteenth century, and early in the ordinal, professionals believed individuals with disabilities were best treated in residential facilities in rural environments. Advocates of these institutions argued that environmental conditions such as urban poverty and vices induced behavioral problems. Reformers such as Dorothea Dix (1802 1887) prevailed upon state governments to provide funds for big and more specialized institutions. These facilities focused more on a particular disability, such as mental retardation, then known as feeble-mindedness or folly mental illness, then labeled insanity or madness sensory impairment such as deafness or blindness and behavioral disorders such as criminality and juvenile delinquency.Children who were judged to be delinquent or aggressive, but not insane, were sent to houses ofrefuge or reform sch ools, whereas children and adults judged to be mad were admitted to psychiatric hospitals. Dix and her followers believed that institutionalization of individuals with disabilities would end their abuse (confinement without treatment in jails and poorhouses) and provide effective treatment. Moral treatment was the dominant approach of the early nineteenth century in psychiatric hospitals, the aim being cure. Moral treatment employed methods analogous to todays occupational therapy, systematic instruction, and positive reinforcement. Evidence suggests this approach was humane and effective in some cases, but the treatment was generally abandoned by the late nineteenth century, due largely to the failure of moral therapists to train others in their techniques and the rise of the article of belief that mental illness was always a result of brain disease. By the end of the nineteenth century, pessimism about cure and emphasis on physiological causes led to a change in orientation that would later bring about the warehouse-like institutions that have become a symbol for abuse and neglect of societys most undefendable citizens.The practice of moral treatment was replaced by the belief that most disabilities were incurable. This led to keeping individuals with disabilities ininstitutions both for their own protection and for the betterment of society. Although the transformation took many years, by the end of the nineteenth century the size of institutions had increased sodramatically that the goal of rehabilitation was no longer possible. Institutions became instruments for permanent segregation. Many special education professionals became critics of institutions. Howe, one of the first to argue for in stitutions for people with disabilities, began advocating placing out residents into families. Unfortunately this practice became a logistical and pragmatic problem before it could become a viable alternative to institutionalization. At the close of the nineteenth century, state governments established juvenile courts and social welfare programs, including foster homes, for children and adolescents. The child study movement became self-aggrandising in the early twentieth century.Using the approach pioneered by G. Stanley Hall (1844 1924 considered the founder of child psychology), researchers attempted to study child development scientifically in relation to education and in so doing established a place for psychology within existence schools. In 1931, the Bradley Home, the first psychiatric hospital for children in the United States, was established in East Providence, Rhode Island. The treatment offered in this hospital, as well as most of the other hospitals of the early twentieth century, was psychodynamic. Psychodynamic ideas fanned enkindle in the diagnosis and classification of disabili ties. In 1951 the first institution for research on exceptional children opened at the University of Illinois and began what was to become the newe st focus of the field of special education the slow learner and, eventually, what we know today as learning disability.The Development of Special Education in Institutions and naturalizes Although Itard failed to normalize Victor, the wild boy of Averyon, he did produce dramatic changes in Victors behavior through education. Modern special education practices can be traced to Itard, and his work marks the beginning of widespread attempts to instruct students with disabilities. In 1817 the first special education school in the United States, the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (now called the American School for the Deaf), was established in Hartford, Connecticut, by Gallaudet. By the middle of the nineteenth century, special educational programs were being provided in many asylums. Education was a prominent part of moral therapy. By the close of the nineteenth century, special classes within regular public schools had been launched in major ci ties. These special classes were initially established for immigrant students who werenot honorable in English and students who had mild mental retardation or behavioral disorders.Descriptions of these children included terms such as steamer children, backward, truant, and incorrigible. Procedures for identifying defectives were included in the Worlds plumb of 1904. By the 1920s special classes for students judged unsuitable for regular classes had become common in major cities. In 1840 Rhode Island passed a law mandating compulsory education for children, but not all states had compulsory education until 1918. With compulsory schooling and the swelling tide of anti-institution sentiment in the twentieth century, many children with disabilities were moved out of institutional settings and into public schools. However, by the mid-twentieth century children with disabilities were lock away often excluded from public schools and kept at home if not institutionalized. In order to res pond to the new population of students with special needs entering schools, school officials created still more special classes in public schools. The number of special classes and complementary support services (assistance given to teachers in managing behavior and learning problems) increased dramatically after World War II.During the early 1900s there was also an increased attention to mental health and a consequent interest in establishing child guidance clinics. By 1930 child guidance clinics and counseling services were relatively common features of major cities, and by 1950 special education had become an identifiable part of urban public education in nearly every school district. By 1960 special educators were instructing their students in a continuum of settings that included hospital schools for those with the most severe disabilities, specialized day schools for students with severe disabilities who were able to live at home, and special classes in regular public schools for students whose disabilities could be managed in small groups. During this period special educators also began to take on the role of consultant, assisting other teachers in instructing students with disabilities.Thus, by 1970 the field of special education was offering a variety of educational placements to students with varying disabilities and needs however, public schools were not yet required to educate all students regardless of their disabilities. During the middle decades of the twentieth century, instruction of children with disabilities often was based on process training which involves attempts to improve childrens academicperformance by teaching them cognitive or motor processes, such as perceptualmotor skills, visual memory, auditory memory, or auditory-vocal processing. These are ancient ideas that found twentieth-century proponents.Process training enthusiasts taught children various perceptual skills (e.g., identifying different sounds or objects by touch) or per ceptual motor skills (e.g., balancing) with the notion that fluency in these skills would generalize to reading, writing, arithmetic, and other basic academic tasks. After many years of research, however, such training was shown not to be effective in improving academic skills. Many of these same ideas were recycled in the late twentieth century as learning styles, multiple intelligences, and other notions that the underlying process of learning varies with gender, ethnicity, or other physiological differences. None of these theories has found much support in reliable research, although direct instruction, mnemonic (memory) devices, and a few other instructional strategies have been supported reliably by research.The History of Legislation in Special EducationAlthough many contend that special education was born with the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) in 1975, it is clear that special educators were beginning to respond to the needs of children wit h disabilities in public schools nearly a century earlier. It is also clear that EAHCA did not spring from a vacuum. This landmark law naturally evolved from events in both special education and the larger society and came about in large part due to the work of grass roots organizations composed of both parents and professionals. These groups dated back to the 1870s, when the American Association of Instructors of the Blind and the American Association on Mental Deficiency (the latter is now the American Association on Mental Retardation) were formed. In 1922 the Council for special Children, now the major professional organization of special educators, was organized. In the 1930s and 1940s parent groups began to band together on a national level.These groups worked to dumbfound changes in their own communities and, consequently, set the stage for changes on a national level. Two of the most influential parent advocacy groups were the National Association for decelerate Citizens (now ARC/USA), organized in 1950, and the Association for Children with Learning Disabilities, organized in 1963. Throughout the firsthalf of the twentieth century, advocacy groups were securing local ordinances that would protect and serve individuals with disabilities in their communities. For example, in 1930, in Peoria, Illinois, the first white cane ordinance gave individuals with blindness the right-of-way when crossing the street.By mid-century all states had legislation providing for education of students with disabilities. However, legislation was still noncompulsory. In the late 1950s federal money was allocated for educating children with disabilities and for the training of special educators. Thus the federal government became formally involved in research and in training special education professionals, but limited its involvement to these functions until the 1970s. In 1971, this support was reinforced and extended to the state level when the Pennsylvania Association fo r retard Children (PARC) filed a class action suit against their Commonwealth.This suit, resolved by consent agreement, specified that all children age six through twenty-one were to be provided exonerate public education in the least restrictive alternative (LRA, which would later become the least restrictive environment LRE clause in EAHCA). In 1973 the reformation Act prohibited discriminatory practices in programs receiving federal financial assistance but imposed no affirmative obligations with respect to special education. In 1975 the healthy action begun under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations resulted in EAHCA, which was signed into law by President Gerald Ford. EAHCA reached full implementation in 1977 and required school districts to provide free and enchant education to all of their students with disabilities. In return for federal funding, each state was to ensure that students with disabilities startd non-discriminatory testing, evaluation, and placement the right to due process education in the least restrictive environment and a free and get education.The centerpiece of this public law (known since 1990 as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA) was, and is, a free appropriate public education (FAPE). To ensure FAPE, the law mandated that each student receiving special education receive an Individualized Education Program (IEP). Under EAHCA, students with identified disabilities were to receive FAPE and an IEP that included relevant instructional goals and objectives, specifications as to length of school year, determination of the most appropriate educational placement, and descriptions of criteria to be usedin evaluation and measurement. The IEP was knowing to ensure that all students with disabilities received educational programs specific to their unique needs.Thus, the education of students with disabilities became federally controlled. In the 1982 case of Board of Education of the Hendrick Hudson Central Sch ool govern v. Rowley, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified the level of services to be afforded students with special needs and ruled that special education services need only provide some educational benefit to students public schools were not required to maximize the educational progress of students with disabilities. In so doing the Supreme Court further defined what was meant by a free and appropriate education. In 1990 EAHCA was revise to include a change to person-first language, replacing the term handicapped student with student with disabilities. The 1990 amendments also added new classification categories for students with autism and traumatic brain injury and transition plans within IEPs for students age fourteen or older.In 1997, IDEA was reauthorized under President Clinton and revise to require the inclusion of students with disabilities in statewide and districtwide assessments, measurable IEP goals and objectives, and functional behavioral assessment and behavior int ervention plans for students with emotional or behavioral needs. Because IDEA is amended and reauthorized every few years, it is impossible to predict the future of this law. It is possible that it will be repealed or altered dramatically by a future Congress. The special education story, both past and future, can be written in many different ways.