Module 3 Flashcards
What is a model?
Models assist understanding by allowing one to examine a simplified representation of a real world system or process
People use a variety of models to obtain a clearer understanding or to make a prediction of a problem or the real world around them; such models include:
- Physical models
- Three-dimensional graphical models
- Animal models
- Biological systems
- Mathematical models
- Computer models
When relationships are highly complex, it is seldom possible to develop methods that are…?
Predictive
Models based on partial knowledge are often referred to as?
Conceptual Models
Models are used to help develop hypotheses that can be examined..
Experimentally
What do experimental results suggest?
That models must be altered or even abadoned in favor of new models
The way in which we understand disability is critical because…?
It influences the language we use to describe individuals living with disability
Models of Disability provide the basis for the following:
- Explanations of causality
- Perceived needs
- Implementation of policy
- Shaping self-identity
- Can cause prejudice and discrimination
What is the Moral Model?
- The oldest model of disability
- In this view, disability was regarded as a punishment for a lack of adherence to social morality and religious proclamations that warn against engaging in certain behaviour
- Disabilities viewed as a “test of faith” where individuals and families are selected by a higher power to receive a disability and are given the opportunity to show endurance, resilience and piety (active goodness or faithfulness)
- People would equate healing of a disability with a strengthening of their faith –> If a person did not experience physical healing of disability, they were considered to have a lack of faith in god
- In societies where this way of thinking still predominates, individuals with disabilities are severely marginalized- often face abandonment and fancified (Anderson, 2013)
- Although there are 3 main models that are generally referred to, there are in fact 2 that still prevail today (medical and social model)
What is the Medical Model?
- From the mid-1800s onwards, the medical model of disability began to gradually replace the moral model – due to significant advances made in science
- Disability is seen as a medical problem in which the goals of intervention are a cure, amelioration to the greatest extent and rehabilitation
- In this right, persons with disabilities are expected to avail themselves to the variety of services offered to them and to spend time in the role of patient or learner being helped by trained professionals
- Sometimes also referred to as the “personal tragedy model” because it describes disability in a fundamentally negative way
-The negative conception of disability that stems from science and this model has contributed to some questionable medical treatments
Ex. voluntary sterilization and the rise in eugenics (Carlson, 2010)
- Projects a dualism which tends to categorize the able-bodied as somehow superior to people with disabilities
- Very focused on the limitations associated with a person’s disabilities; this essentially disregards the environments that might intensify or adversely affect a person’s functional abilities
- The medical model assigns great power to the medical professionals who diagnose individuals with disabilities
- Individuals are exempted from taking responsibility for their own state
- Described as being in need of help “charity and fundraising”
- A loss of distinction between impairment and sickness (Llewellyn et al., 2008)
- Creating a labels and categorizations based largely on the individual’s function without necessarily taking into account the individuals values or wants
- Posits that problems faced by individuals are independent of wider sociocultural, physical or political environments (Brittain, 2004)
What is the Social Model?
- Inspired by activist movements of the 1970s
- According to this model, it is society that labels and disables people with impairments, therefore any meaningful solution must be directed at societal change rather than individual adjustment (Barnes, Mercer and Shakespeare, 2010)
- In contrast to the Medical model, this model holds that individuals with disability, if possible, should assume control of their own lives and that medical professionals who seek to help must be committed to promoting this control
- Concerned with addressing the barriers to participation (O’Connell et al., 2008)
- Social arrangements may be more just, unprejudiced, and ethically preferable than the existing arrangements for individuals with disabilities
- It is argued that the Social approach ignores the often painful realities of having a disability (Giddens, 2006)
- Those who follow the Medical model reject the distinction between impairment and disability and the language associated with the model is still debated today (Mitra, 2006)
- Advocates for the Social model argue that while they acknowledge the potential for limitations that disabilities present, these restrictions do not constitute to the conceptualization of what it is to be disabled
- A lack of regard for the concept of intersectionality
- Suggestions for a social-relational model that stresses both the personal and social effects of disability
What is the distinction between impairment and disability?
- Impairment: lacking part of or all of a limb, or have a defective organ or mechanism of the body
- Disability: a restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization
What is social creationist?
Issues of disability and oppressive states are socially created by an oppressive society
What is social constructive?
Issues of disability are related to institutionalized discrimination rather than the collective views of people who compose a population
What is Embodiment?
- Developed to target the criticisms of the Medical and Social models
- The ultimate goal of understanding the experiences of individuals with disabilities
