Teaching Disability Studies: Contributions to Training in Psychology

Abstract

This research aimed to identify the contributions of teaching disability studies to training in psychology from the perspective of participants in a discipline entitled Psychology and People with Disabilities. The locus of the research was a psychology course at a public university in southern Brazil. Information was obtained through the application of a sociodemographic questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with fourteen people who attended the course and analyzed using the thematic analysis technique. The results showed that the knowledge obtained in the discipline contributed to: the appropriation of the social model of disability and the contributions of feminist disability studies; the identification of disabled people as political people; the expansion of the perception of social barriers and; the appropriation of some elements of the Brazilian legislation on disability. Finally, it emphasizes the relevance of disability studies being included in the curriculum for training in psychology from the perspective of human rights.