Since the 1960s, studies in the psycho-sciences have implied that people with dyslexia are at increased risk of engaging in criminal behaviours. There are two common themes that have emerged from this research. Firstly, studies that employ a psycho-medical model imply that the correlation between dyslexia and crime is embedded within neurological…

Parents of children with autism have played a prominent role in controversies surrounding this condition. Parental voices were critical in challenging the "refrigerator mother" theory and more recently have attracted public attention for claims that autism may be caused by childhood vaccinations and that "unorthodox biomedical" treatments may…

This paper is about mothering, young learning disabled people, their sexualised and relationship lives and normalisation--not through the lens of the disabled person, but via a mothers perspective and theoretical discussion. As a mother who has a learning disabled daughter, a feminist and an academic my own mothering experience, my Ph.D. research…

This paper argues that the dominance of the global North in the universalising and totalising tendencies of writings about disability has resulted in the marginalisation of these experiences in the global South. This constitutes an intellectual crisis for disability studies in the periphery. The experience of colonisation and colonialism in the…

Research has demonstrated that humans form perceptions as a result of a variety of complex cognitive processes. The purpose of this pilot study is to demonstrate the potential use of perceptual mapping as a means to capture the perceptions of groups of individuals who work closely with people with disabilities and examine their perceptions in a…

In this article the aim is to challenge essentialist ontological assumptions surrounding the impairment category of "learning difficulties" as it was previously conceptualized in social theory and practice. I ground my knowledge production in self-advocates connected to the self-advocacy movement in Flanders (Belgium) and in critical…

Normalization and social role valorization continue to play a central role in shaping debates and practice relating to learning difficulties. In the context of recent arguments this paper draws on the work of Foucault to deconstruct these theories. Foucault's work alerts us to a conceptual confusion at their heart which reproduces a common but…

Blatant forms of prejudice towards disabled people appear to be disappearing in the UK. However, subtle forms of prejudice remain and may be highly damaging to the achievement of the vision of disabled people being "respected and included as equal members of society". In order to assist placing subtle forms of prejudice within a…

This qualitative study explores the educational experiences of an African-American adult woman with disabilities. The intersections of gender, race and disability are theorized through the lenses of disability, feminist and critical theory. Specifically, I address the following three questions. What are the experiences of an African-American woman…