Social, Systemic, Individual-Medical or Cultural? Questionnaire on the Concepts of Disability Among Teacher Education Students

Abstract

The individual-medical concept of disability, whereby disability is believed to be caused by some intractable impairment, is perhaps the most widely held view in society. However, other concepts exist with which teachers in inclusive schools should be familiar (e.g., social, systemic), to better inform teacher behavior, attitudes and understanding. We therefore developed an instrument to capture education students’ concepts of disability. We constructed the questionnaire according to four theoretical models of disability (individual-medical, social, systemic, and cultural concepts), which are commonly used in inclusive teacher education, and validated this on a sample of 775 education students. Additionally, we administered the Attitudes towards Inclusion Scale (AIS) and measured key demographic variables. The instruments, data and analysis code used are available online at https://osf.io/dm4cs/. After dropping redundant items, a shortened form of the questionnaire contained 16 items, with satisfactory psychometric values for scales pertaining to four concepts of disability (CFI = 0.963, TLI = 0.955, RMSEA = 0.037, SRMR = 0.039). These four concepts of disability showed small correlations with the AIS, indicating that our questionnaire measured an independent construct. The more experience education students had with disability and the more courses they had attended on inclusive education, the more likely they were to agree with the social concept of disability. The questionnaire shows promise in measuring concepts of disability and might be used to stimulate students’ critical reflection during teacher education.

Analysis of Mockery and Discrimination towards People with Disabilities in Cartoons: The Family Guy Case

“…If there is good critical education in the media, as some recent studies on the subject argue, there will be greater knowledge of the typology of content (satire, criticism, different types of humour, etc.) and its interpretations, and fewer stereotypes will be reproduced towards people with disabilities (Gebhardt et al 2022;Vázquez-Barrio et al 2021).…”

Attitudes toward Inclusive Education from a Network Perspective

“…Transmissive and constructivist beliefs have been assessed using instruments developed by Kunter et al [52] and are supplemented by three newly developed items each, resulting in a total of eleven items for constructivist beliefs and eight items for transmissive beliefs. Models of disability have been assessed based on the instrument developed by Gebhardt et al [53].…”

“…To increase the internal consistency of the instruments, items had to be removed post hoc. A total of 13 items-nine newly developed items and four items from Gebhardt et al [53]-were removed. The affected instruments will have to be re-evaluated in future research to ensure their validity and reliability.…”

InClass – an instrument to assess classroom management in inclusive and special education with a focus on heterogeneous learning groups

“…Both practicing and prospective teachers should have extensive knowledge of special teaching strategies that can be adapted to students' learning needs and improve their academic performance (Krämer et al, 2021; European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2022). However, inclusive education is more than just effective teaching, as it must always include social concepts of disability and special educational needs (Gebhardt et al, 2022). Therefore, it is essential to question to what extent inclusive education differs from regular education (Hornby, 2014).…”