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Disability, Stigma And Otherness: Perspectives Of Parents And Teachers, Priya Lalvani

Department of Teaching and Learning Scholarship and Creative Works

This qualitative study explored the perspectives of parents and teachers in the US with regard to the meaning and implications of disability in the context of schoolling, and of raising a child with a disability. The findings revealed broad conceptual differences in the perspectives of these two groups. Teachers’ beliefs were generally consistent with medical model perspectives on disability as biologically defined. Parents’ interpretations, more aligned with a sociocultural paradigm, were situated in the cultural meanings ascribed to disability and linked with issues of stigma, marginalisation and access. The findings also revealed the existence of master narratives on families of …