P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW

Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, Vol. 13, No. 4, December 2001 (°
c 2001)

A Pragmatic Evaluation of Three Models

of Disability in Special Education
Scot Danforth1,2

This paper explains and utilizes the philosophy of pragmatism in the eval-
uation of three models of disability used in disability research and services.
The three models are (1) the functional limitations model, (2) the minority
group model, and (3) the social construction model. Pragmatism emphasizes
the moral and political utility of ideas, the ways that a person, group, or culture
can use a concept or belief to guide action in service to a democracy that val-
ues diversity, individuality, and equality. This analysis evaluates the practical
usefulness of these three models in light of these democratic priorities.
KEY WORDS: special education; models of disability.

If there be any life that it is really better we should lead, and if there
be any idea which, if believed in, would help us to lead that life, then it
would be really better for us to believe in that idea. . . .
(James, 1907/1981, p. 37)
The pragmatist tradition of philosophy in America—as exemplified by
William James in the above quotation and demonstrated more recently in the
writings of Richard Bernstein (1985), Richard Rorty (1979, 1989, 1991a,b,
1998), and Cornel West (1985, 1989, 1993)—asks us to assess the value of our
ideas on strictly practical terms. Wooly abstractions may fascinate us but the
bottom line is how persons and communities can make use of ideas in the
specific contexts confronted in their lives. To this eminently practical end,
the pragmatist is not persuaded by models or theories that are claimed to
be truthful because of the rigor of a supportive program of social science.
1 School of Education, University of Missouri–St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri.
2 To whom correspondence should be adderssed at School of Education, University of Missouri –
St. Louis, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St. Louis, Missouri 63121-4499; e-mail: scot@[Link].

343

1056-263X/01/1200-0343$19.50/0 °
C 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

344 Danforth

What counts for the pragmatist are the practical implications of belief. If one
takes a given notion to be truthful, to be worthy of guiding one’s actions,
where will this belief take one? If a group or community take an idea to
be a worthwhile basis for action, what can they then do? The pragmatist is
concerned with how ideas serve as moral and political counsel for action
within the specific contexts of individual lives and communities.
Knowledge or belief, to the pragmatist, is only valuable as a predispo-
sition toward useful, worthwhile action in the social world. The pragmatists
evaluate knowledge on the basis of its social utility in helping individuals
and groups organize experience, frame situations, and conduct actions in
pursuit of the larger moral goal of democratic community. If we apply this
approach to the current array of professional ideas about disabilities, special
education, and other disability services, we focus our sights on how ideas
serve as the immediate conceptual precursors to practice, the leaping-off
points for special education teachers, service providers, and others who take
action within the lives of persons with disabilities. We also focus on how
professional efforts can serve democracy.
The purpose of this paper is the application of this pragmatist emphasis
on the practical value of ideas in evaluating the moral and political utility of
three models of disability that have been used in disability research. These
are (1) the functional limitations model, (2) the minority group model, and
(3) the social construction of disability model (Jones, 1996).
The functional limitations model is obviously dominant within special
education law, research, university teacher preparation, and day-to-day pub-
lic school activities. This model formulates disability as an individual phe-
nomenon of psychological, physical, or behavioral deficit. The latter two
models, though lesser known among university researchers and teacher ed-
ucators, are far from new. Each offers a serious challenge to the dominant
model. The minority group model, although generally not denying the as-
sumption that a person with a disability bears a bodily deficit or limitation,
recasts disability within an outline of identity politics. What is important,
according to this model, is not the individual disability condition so much
as how the common attitudes, beliefs, and structures of society frequently
place that individual at a social and economic disadvantage. The social con-
struction model allies politically with the advocacy positions of the minority
group model while contending that disability, no matter how it is conceived
or viewed, is a product of social interaction, thought, belief, and language
use. What is crucial, according to this approach, is how persons, groups, and
organizations “construct” (think about, feel about, act upon) meaning about
and make sense of the phenomenon we call “disability.”
This paper will begin with a selective overview of the pragmatist tra-
dition in American philosophy. It will then explain the three models of
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Three Models of Disability 345

disability that have been utilized within the professional literature. After
explaining the central ideas of each model, including those areas of overlap
between the models, this paper will analyze the political and moral implica-
tions of each. This analysis will necessarily rely on a particular delineation of
the “good” and the “just,” a specific philosophical description of an ideal of
human social living. One cannot provide an analysis of morality and politics
without offering a conceptual framework of social living that asserts no-
tions of morally justifiable action and just political arrangements. Fittingly,
the practical implications of each model will be evaluated in regard to the
pragmatist moral–political ideal of constructing and maintaining what John
Dewey called “creative democracy,” a bottom–up, participatory brand of
egalitarian community.

PRAGMATISM: PRACTICALITY, TRUTH, AND DEMOCRACY

Of the 125-year history of American pragmatism (see West, 1989), run-

ning from founder Charles Pierce to the progressive era work of John Dewey
and William James to current-day philosophers Richard Rorty and Cornel
West, two specific ideas are pertinent to this analysis. These are the pragma-
tist’s approach to truth and the Dewey–West articulation of the social ideal
of “creative democracy.” Combined, these two notions will provide a frame-
work for evaluating the practical usefulness of the three models of disability
in service to the higher moral ideal of democratic living.
The pragmatist’s approach to truth champions practicality in daily liv-
ing while turning a skeptical eye to traditional scientific assumptions about
objectivity and method. Pragmatism, as the title suggests, is an attempt to
make philosophy and inquiry practical, bringing obtuse and high-minded
formulations down from the abstract heavens, valuing analytic thought only
in as much as it can serve mundane, social purposes. For the pragmatist, the
positivist scientist who maintains that he/she uses research methods to “find”
truth and then accurately represents that “truth” in words and numbers is
operating under a fatally flawed, self-congratulatory theory of knowledge.
Readers will quickly note that this assertion casts doubt upon truth claims
commonly made by quantitative and qualitative researchers who often fill
the pages of social science journals.
Most social science assumes a “correspondence” theory of discourse, the
belief that language—words, numbers, phrases, and descriptions—is able to
copy or mirror events, facts, phenomenon, and essences of the social world.
Truth, by this theory, is a statement in the one best language, the language that
is more closely allied to objective reality or “the facts of the matter” than any
other constellation of words. Humanly created symbols called language, if
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

346 Danforth

correctly used, are taken to represent what really happens in the social world,
the reality behind the appearance, the hard facts beneath the misleading
fictions, the truth cleansed of bias and distortion (Rorty, 1979, 1989, 1991a,b,
1998).
In contrast to the positivist social scientists, pragmatists do not have
a theory of truth or how to find it. They do not offer a counterstance that
claims to locate or represent truth better or with greater epistemological
purity than the correspondence theory of the traditional social scientist.
What pragmatists do, in a very casual fashion, is deflate all notions of truth
that are held as privileged, denying the epistemic privilege of any one theory.
Truth, for the pragmatist, is a social artifact. It is simply the product of
local procedures or habits of justification, those social processes by which
a community or group produces what they deem to be “true.” For tradi-
tional social scientists, this truth justification procedure is typically synony-
mous with “research methods” that are viewed by the majority (or by the
most powerful) as acceptable. Other groups who are not social scientists—
for example, Lutheran ministers, baseball umpires, Sufi clerics, or cost
accountants—maintain their own social practices for the production of what
they call “truth.” Their practices make good sense within their own group
while seeming odd and less sensible to outsiders.
In this sense, we can see that pragmatists view “truth” as statements
by a specific social or language community based on the traditional habits
of truth-making developed, maintained, and supported within that group.
Pragmatists realize that the habitual truth justification procedures of social
science include the firm declaration that the truths produced within the con-
fines of that social group are actually larger, more universal truths that cut
across communities, cultures, and perhaps even historical epochs. This ha-
bitual stance on the universal nature of truths produced within the social
science community is viewed by the pragmatist as an unconvincing maneu-
ver to elevate local truth games with what Rorty often calls “skyhooks,”
rhetorical attempts to create an authoritative knowledge discipline “that
would detach itself from time and place and see reality plain (Rorty, 1991a,
p. 77).” Even if an entire social science community (or enclave of Sufi clerics)
holds consensus on their ability to “see reality plain,” the pragmatist takes
this as merely one culturally positioned social group’s way of justifying their
own truths, a logic unable to extend convincingly beyond the group, a logic
unable to produce truths acceptable to communities that operate different
truth justification procedures.
Not surprisingly, the pragmatist disability researcher is not persuaded by
pronouncements from other disability researchers that we need to restrain
our words and practices from wandering beyond the confines of words and
practices authorized by processes of “scientific validation” (e.g., Kauffman
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Three Models of Disability 347

and Hallahan, 1995; Kauffman et al., 1995; Simpson, 1995; Smelter et al.,
1994). The pragmatist replaces a concern with the scientific with a concern
for the ethical; the way that living together creates cruelty or kindness, asym-
metry or equality, tolerance or prejudice. Armed with this ethical concern,
the pragmatist evaluates ideas and words based on what James (1907/1981)
called the “cash value,” the way that individuals and groups can use state-
ments and beliefs to support, inspire, and guide themselves in the daily tasks
of democratic living (Danforth, in press).
For the purposes of this analysis of disability models, this means that
the pragmatist judges the value of each of the three models in light of how
each may be useful to an individual or the assemblage of special educators
or disability service providers who want to contribute to the construction of
equality and unity within a community populated by persons of varying abil-
ities and qualities. This means that we set aside the metaphysical question,
“Is this model scientifically true?” (e.g., Cullinan et al., 1991) in favor of the
practical question, “What can we special educators and service providers
do with this model? Where will it take us as we act within the social–moral
world?”
The social–moral world in which the pragmatist judges the value of a
given belief or theory is best explained in the pragmatist political philosophy
of John Dewey (1916, 1930, 1939) and Cornel West (1985, 1989, 1993). We
could easily say that Dewey originated the idea of “creative democracy,”
and West has updated that notion to address the complex cultural politics of
America in the late twentieth century.
To John Dewey, we Americans are shortsighted if we view democracy
only or primarily as a style of government. Although government institutions
and forms are necessary, their existence does not ensure that a society is living
in a democratic manner. What makes a society a democracy, according to
Dewey, is the fact that the goals of individuality, equality, and freedom are
embraced and enacted by average citizens going about their daily business
in their neighborhood and community. Democracy is an enacted communal
creed, an intentional and shared way of living together, that is evidenced in
the attitudes of individuals and the equal social relations of the participants.
At the heart, it is a mode of conviviality encompassing both means and end,
processes and goals, that upholds the importance of the equal participation
of each citizen in those decision-making processes that affect each and all
(Bernstein, 1985; Stuhr, 1993).
Democracy is “creative” in that it requires citizens to roll out of bed
each morning and construct it anew in their activities. Without continuous
renewal and remaking, democracy fades into a memory, an ancient tale about
the founding fathers and the wonderful principles they espoused. Dewey
warned over 50 years ago that the creative element of democracy was being
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

348 Danforth

shortshrifted by Americans who too casually took democracy to be a static

historical and governmental background to their daily activities instead of
the moral ideal that should guide those activities. For this reason, he de-
scribed democracy as radical and as yet unfulfilled, a journey unrealized, a
moral vision that calls Americans forward toward the building of communi-
ties in which all persons are valued and heard.
West (1985, 1989, 1993) updates this description of ground-level, con-
structed pluralism as democratic ideal to a late twentieth century American
political scene marked by rampant consumerism, racial and gender asymme-
tries, and oft-ignored social class inequalities. West reclaims the Deweyan
social cause while exposing and critiquing the specific forms of social inequal-
ity and injustice that stand as prominent roadblocks to the task of democracy
at this point in American history. West (1993, p. 4) challenges privileged intel-
lectuals (such as university researchers who create and contribute to models
of disability)
to align themselves with demoralized, demobilized, depoliticized, and disorganized
people in order to empower and enable social action and, if possible, to enlist collec-
tive insurgency for the expansion of freedom, democracy, and individuality.

To West, living and working in the activist footsteps of John Dewey (e.g.,
Ryan, 1995; Westbrook, 1991), a university intellectual living within the
American democracy cannot remain satisfied with writing academic arti-
cles and books without embracing disenfranchised persons and groups in an
effort to further democracy as a way of life. He calls for a Gramscian unity
of the intellectual and the political, the professional and the democratic. The
writings of university researchers and scholars—including models of disabil-
ity put forth and utilized within research—should be one ingredient in a
forthright effort to build opportunities for equality and meaningful commu-
nity participation among persons of varied cultural backgrounds, genders,
(dis)abilities, social classes, religions, and sexual orientations.
In the following sections, the three models of disability will be pre-
sented. Then the ethical values and democratic vision of pragmatism will be
employed in an evaluation of all three.

THE FUNCTIONAL LIMITATIONS MODEL

Disability refers to reduced function or loss of a particular body part or organ; it is

often used interchangeably with the term impairment. A disability limits the ability
to perform certain tasks (e.g., to see, hear, walk) in the same way that most persons
do. (Heward, 1996, p. 8)

The functional limitations model is ensconced in the various disability

definitions of the original PL 94-142 and the more recent versions of IDEA.
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Three Models of Disability 349

Special education research in all areas of disability has tended to assume

that each type of disability served by special education programs is of this
nature. Federal and state definitions of the various disabilities that qualify an
individual for special education services are firmly entrenched in this model.
University textbooks used in the preparation of teachers generally present
this model of disability as the dominant or even only way of thinking about
disability.
The pervasiveness of the functional limitations model in special ed-
ucation is so complete that a brief explication will suffice. The functional
limitations model, sometimes called the “medical model” (e.g., Hahn, 1983,
1985), frames disability as a condition of biophysical essence and origin that
renders an individual unable to perform expected, valued, or typical human
activities. The emphasis is on the physical abnormality or deficiency that is
held to be central to actions, experiences, and social identity of the individual.
Within this model, the underlying physical or biological defect is considered
the primary causal source of an individual’s enduring state of limitation in
thinking and acting within the social world. The implication throughout this
theory is that an imperfection within an individual’s physicality results in
actions or behaviors that fall significantly short of what one would want or
expect them to be.

THE MINORITY GROUP MODEL

Disability studies challenges the idea that the social and economic status of assigned
roles of people with disabilities are inevitable outcomes of their condition. . . . (Linton
et al., 1995, p. 4)

Meyerson (1988) pinpoints the conceptualization of persons with dis-

abilities as an identifiable minority group bearing much in common with
other devalued or oppressed classes developed in the post-WWII work of
Roger Barker and his Stanford colleagues. This research team studied the
social and psychological adjustment of armed forces veterans who had sus-
tained physical handicaps during the War. The Barker research team found
that the attitudes and behaviors of this group of veterans could be usefully
explained by viewing this population as an oppressed minority group (Barker
et al., 1946).
Despite these historical roots, the minority group model has rarely been
utilized within special education or psychological research. Typically, it has
been used by researchers who try to bring forward the voice and words
of persons with disabilities into the professional literature. For example,
Bogdan and Taylor (1994) published an emotionally moving and politically
challenging set of autobiographies, bringing forth the words of two adults
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

350 Danforth

with developmental disabilities as authorities on their own lives. Similarly,

Finnish researcher Jahnukainen (1999) has sought out young adults who were
once considered to have emotional–behavioral disorders and interviewed
them to gain their perspectives on their experiences in special education.
Beyond a few examples within disability research, the primary source
of minority group model occurs within the growing field of disability studies
(Charlton, 1998; Davis, 1997; Hahn, 1983, 1985, 1987; Linton, 1998; Linton
et al., 1995; Thomson, 1995). Disability studies, a parallel to university depart-
ments of women’s studies or African American studies, is a multidisciplinary
field of academic scholarship that values the experiences and perspectives of
persons with disabilities and fully embraces the disability rights movement. It
posits disabled persons as an oppressed social group seeking equality within
a social terrain that has historically been slanted against them.
Disability studies scholars generally accept the concept of disability as
a condition of functional limitation based in biology or physicality. That is
the sole shared ground with the functional limitations model. Although re-
search based within the functional limitation model has tended to stress the
personal difficulties imposed by functional impairments, the minority model
conceptualization emphasizes the prevalence and persistence of the prob-
lems of social stereotyping and prejudice. Although the former approach
focuses on improving the functional capabilities of disabled persons along
with some modifications of the external environment, the latter orienta-
tion seeks to eliminate prejudice by exposing, protesting, and even legally
prohibiting discrimination against this minority. As Hahn (1985) explains,
the minority group approach operates from the assumption that “the ob-
stacles created by a disability are basically external rather than internal
(p. 306).” Disability is best viewed as an array of life difficulties occurring
within the arrangement of the physical and social environment surround-
ing an individual rather than as a direct and inevitable result of biophysical
imperfection.
If we highlight the difference between the functional limitations model
and the minority group model, we see a move to the latter as a shift from an
individual to a social understanding of what disability means. The salience of
disability resides not in a medical condition or in statistically verified short-
comings in individual ability. The essence of disability within the minority
group model exists within the daily experiences of persons with disabilities
in the social world and within communities of predominantly nondisabled
persons who traditionally have done little to provide equal access to phys-
ical environments, economic opportunities, political operations, and social
enjoyments. The key lies not in the individual but in the way various aspects
of society respond to that individual. In this light, disability is an imminently
social and political phenomenon.
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Three Models of Disability 351

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION MODEL

It takes a whole culture of people producing idealizations of what everyone should

be and a system of measures for identifying those who fall short for us to forget
that we collectively produce our disabilities and the discomforts that conventionally
accompany them. (McDermott and Varenne, 1995, p. 337)

Theorists holding to minority group model generally claim that disabil-

ity is primarily a social construction. They tend to separate out the individual
condition of mind or body itself from the social reaction to that condition,
naming the former an objective fact and calling the latter aspect a subjective
response. By isolating biophysical condition from social reaction, individual
characteristics from social beliefs and physical environment, the minority
group theorists are able to direct our attention to the moral and political
problems of discrimination and prejudice.
Although generally agreeing with this political stance, social construc-
tionists prefer to set aside distinctions of objective and subjective phenomena
in favor of detailed investigations of the complex, social ways that persons,
groups, organizations, and cultures construct meaning within and about lived
experiences. The social construction model holds that what is assumed and
understood to be real by persons in the course of their activities, including
what would be commonly called a “disability,” is constructed by those per-
sons in their thoughts, words, and interactions. Those “constructions” are
simultaneously situational inventions and remnants of cultural, historical
traditions. Ways of framing and defining human experience are crafted in
the moment out of cultural resources and historical habits, those words and
concepts passed down through the years. For example, “mental retardation”
only makes sense to persons who speak or hear the term because it histori-
cally describes certain persons under certain conditions. That term and the
possible adherent meanings are passed on within both the professional cul-
ture and the broader society. The meanings and utilization of the term are,
to some extent, open to alteration and modification (Danforth and Navarro,
1997).
Drawing from the work of sociologists Berger and Luckmann (1967) and
Garfinkel (1967), special education researchers using the social construction
model emphasize the centrality of language, thought, interaction, power,
and culture in the making of human meaning in lived contexts ( Bogdan and
Taylor, 1989; Danforth and Navarro, 1997; Ferguson et al., 1992; McDermott
and Varenne, 1995; Sleeter, 1986). A disability of whatever type that is taken
to be factual in conversation and interaction among a specific group is merely
a conceptual fabrication, a way of framing and talking about human expe-
rience that is granted privilege over alternative explanations. “Disability,”
therefore, is a customary cultural means of organizing and defining human
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

352 Danforth

experience and individual identity. How that cultural product plays out in
lived contexts varies greatly across disability types and situations as individ-
uals and groups maintain, resist, and reformulate common understandings
within their actions and words.

EVALUATING THE THREE MODELS OF DISABILITY

This final section will evaluate each of the models of disability in light
of the priorities and values of pragmatism. Recall that such an evaluation
asks us to consider the possible practical implications of special educators
and disability service providers believing in and utilizing each model. Recall
that the pragmatist social–moral ideal as articulated by Dewey and West
emphasized the concrete actions of individuals and groups working toward
the daily making of “creative democracy,” a community that seeks equality,
participation, and the acceptance of the diversity of human groups. For the
special education teacher or other direct service professional working in
democratic service, where will believing in and using each model lead?

The Functional Limitations Model

The pragmatist views the functional limitations model as a double-edged

sword, simultaneously supplying conceptual resources in support of democ-
racy and against democracy.
In practice, the functional limitations model encourages special educa-
tion teachers and service providers to provide work specifically on raising
an individual’s level of functioning in areas of measured functional deficit.
The goal is primarily to provide programming that attempts to bring about
improvement in those skill areas (e.g., academic, social, and vocational) that
are significantly deficient. It is assumed that improvement in functioning will
prepare that individual to lead a more successful and fulfilling life.
This emphasis on the improvement of an individual’s functioning ful-
fills Dewey’s idea that a democracy requires an educational system that fully
prepares citizens for participation (Dewey, 1916). Living in and contributing
to a democracy requires particular skills and attitudes that must be devel-
oped within educational programs. Allied to this notion is the understanding
that individuals must be prepared to take meaningful places of employ-
ment within the economic system. Although Dewey did not naively support
the idea that public schools should simply provide docile and subservient
workers to the corporate world, he did think that schools and training pro-
grams have an obligation to prepare young persons for the complexities and
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Three Models of Disability 353

demands of employment. Certainly, he supported the idea that an active and

intelligent citizenry consists of individuals who are educated to confront the
challenges of living in a democratic, capitalistic society. To this end, educa-
tional programs that help persons with disabilities improve their skills and
elevate their levels of functioning are serving democratic purposes.
The other edge of the sword in regard to the functional limitations model
asks a very direct and critical question: How can we create a community in
which the equal status of all citizens is paramount when some citizens are
assumed to be lesser? The functional limitations model claims that a very
basic and undeniable abnormality or deficiency sits at the bottom of an indi-
vidual’s personality, self, or identity. It assumes that there are persons who
should be different than who they are. It assumes that the proper attitude
in regard to this deep abnormality or deficiency is correction. Work to fix
it, change it, make it different so that it is less abnormal, less deficient. For
persons who are either unable or unwilling to make such changes, educa-
tional and other services aimed at elevating levels of functioning primarily
serve as a means of marking the served population as persons of lesser so-
cial status. The common professional practice of labeling some persons as
lesser undoubtedly fuels this stigmatization and social devaluation, a phe-
nomenon that fosters hierarchy instead of equality among persons (Bogdan
and Taylor, 1994; Danforth and Rhodes, 1997; Kliewer and Biklen, 1996).

The Minority Group Model

The pragmatist applauds the rise of the minority group model within
the nascent field of disability studies as a positive development supporting
the “creative democracy” envisioned by Dewey and West. This applause
is tempered with a sense of caution about the possibility that endeavors
to cast persons with disabilities as a minority group for political purposes
will suffer the cultural backlash that has recently struck the efforts of other
groups, most notably persons of color, who first forged and walked this
civil rights trail. Additionally, the pragmatist would be concerned about the
difficulty of making equal space within the disability rights movement for
persons of various disability types. For example, the current scholarship in the
field of disability studies frequently provides the perspectives of persons with
physical disabilities while rarely including the perspectives of persons with
cognitive or emotional disabilities.
The minority group model is a useful notion in service to democratic
community because it combines two elements that are familiar and accept-
able to many professionals and laypersons: (1) a down-to-earth understand-
ing of disability as biophysical impairment constraining ability and (2) a
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

354 Danforth

social vision of equal access and participation in all aspects of American so-
ciety. This social vision has been evident in efforts to secure inclusive school-
ing for students with disabilities (e.g., Gartner and Lipsky, 1987; Wang et al.,
1988) and the movement toward integrating adults with developmental dis-
abilities into the community (e.g., Dossa, 1992).
The idea that a person with a disability has a biophysical anomaly that
bars that person from doing something important strikes laypersons and
service professionals as bare common sense. One need not comprehend the
measurement science of the functional limitations model or the seemingly
esoteric theory of the social construction model. Disability is taken at face
value. The (apparent) common sense obviousness of this understanding of
disability facilitates the unification of persons of a wide variety of educational
and professional backgrounds on a shared ground of political unity.
The social vision of equal rights and participation has been articu-
lated and demonstrated within the civil rights struggles and gains of African
Americans, women, and (to a lesser extent) gays. In past half century, this
civil rights path has been forged and paved by these groups, thereby cre-
ating a ready, insurgent narrative and strategy for persons with disabilities.
Tremendous legal, economic, and cultural gains have been made by these mi-
nority groups who have embodied and utilized this cultural narrative of civil
rights. Contrary to pre-ADA questions about the feasibility of organizing a
similar political movement for persons with disabilities (Scotch, 1988), the
legitimacy of the civil rights strategy for persons with disabilities has well-
established in recent years. The passage of the Americans with Disabilities
Act stands as a large legislative victory in this political struggle for equality
and dignity.
Backlash against persons with disabilities is the greatest danger of the
minority group political strategy. In recent years, a conservative shift has
occurred in the public perception of many governmental efforts to even the
political and economic playing field for members of minority groups. Affir-
mative action and special preference programs have come under increasing
fire. In some cases, they have been repealed or abbreviated. For example,
the university systems in California and Texas have both made dramatic
changes in their admission policies, withdrawing processes, and structures
put in place to ensure the presence of persons of color on campuses. As a
result, many of these university campuses have seen dramatic drops in the
number of African and Mexican American students.
Behind these changes in affirmative action policies is a broader
social climate of bitterness and intolerance within a middle-class Anglo main-
stream that fears losing its status, wealth, and comfort in an era of chang-
ing demographics and cultural politics. Not surprisingly, the Anglo, middle-
class has grown increasingly defensive in response to both the protests and
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Three Models of Disability 355

advancements of oppressed minority groups. Social change of this nature has

typically brought about defensiveness and resistance, at least initially, on the
part of the privileged defenders of the status quo (see Deutsch, 1973). Al-
though the Americans with Disabilities Act stands as an important legislative
victory for the disability rights movement, we have yet to see how much in-
terest and tolerance the American middle class has for yet another minority
group calling for recognition and equal access. A newly enfranchized minor-
ity group gathering behind the civil rights rhetoric and strategies of the past
may unfortunately provoke conservative backlash and insensitivity.
Additionally, a problem within the disability rights movement itself
looms. One must question the degree of social equality and inclusiveness
within a common movement that attempts to unite persons with a wide
variety of conditions and diagnoses. Authors within disability studies and
leaders within the disability rights movement have been primarily persons
with physical disabilities. Not surprisingly, persons with cognitive disabilities
or histories of mental illness have played lesser roles within both academic
writing and political action. A political pecking order is possible as persons
with arguably higher stigma disabilities (mental illness, cognitive disabilities)
are delegated to the fringes of the movement. It is unclear how this internal
hierarchy will play out within the broader effort to win social equality for all
persons with disabilities.

The Social Construction Model

It is easy to be baffled by the practical implications, or lack thereof, of

the social construction model. This stream of scholarship is a very promis-
ing, critical tool within intellectual circles that seems to offer little of direct
utility to everyday efforts to construct democracy in communities beyond
the university walls. For example, the work of Mercer (1973) did much to
illuminate the social processes of diagnosis, casting doubt on the idea of
“mental retardation” as an objective condition existing antecedent and ex-
ternal to the labeling activities of professionals. This critique of diagnosis
as social and political action, while important and fairly constant over the
years within academic circles, has seemingly had little impact on disability
diagnoses within the public schools.
Social constructionists are left to decide whether they are merely high-
brow elites who launch multisyllabic prose across abstract clouds, never to
come to practical earth, or much-needed Gramscian intellectuals who fortify
the front half of the theory–practice linkage with unyielding devotion and
diligence. The optimistic social constructionist scholar might view herself
as crafting intellectual support for crucial cultural changes in attitudes and
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

356 Danforth

behavior in relation to persons with disabilities, a shedding of historically

stereotyped and pernicious images of disabled persons in favor of a broader
acceptance of disabilities as dimensions of human diversity within a flexi-
ble, multicultural society. Writings in academic journals, although directly
reaching only a small range of readers, might be thought of as the weaving
of small yet vital threads within a growing tapestry of democratic change.
On the other hand, a less optimistic university scholar might complain
that the obtuse theorizing of the social constructionists connects only the
most esoteric minds within an insulated academic discourse. It fails to come
down from the clouds in useful ways for the common person who deals with
real problems and suffering.
At the very least, we can say that the social constructionist model offers
extensive opportunities for intellectuals within academic settings to chal-
lenge the standard, social science discourse of disability as functional lim-
itation. Apparently objective disability conditions are cast as cultural con-
structions that rely on specific vocabularies of description (Danforth and
Navarro, 1997), ideological loadings (Danforth and Rhodes, 1997), and po-
litical histories (Sleeter, 1986). The loosening up of the apparent objectivity
of various disabilities makes space for the development of ways of viewing
disabilities and the lives of persons considered to have disabilities that honor
those individuals and contribute to pluralistic democracy.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS ON DISABILITY MODELS

AND DEMOCRACY

. . . it does no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods or no God.
(Thomas Jefferson, as quoted by Rorty, 1991a, p. 175)

Rorty (1991a) has observed, in alliance with Thomas Jefferson, that

democracy does not rely on consensus among citizens about ultimate mat-
ters. All that need be in place among citizens is a tolerance of the fact that
consensus is not needed for persons to live peacefully side-by-side. In fact,
if one takes this notion a step further, one can see that the only nations
that view complete agreement among citizens on large questions of religion,
morality, and politics as necessary are totalitarian states that espouse and
enact principles in opposition to democracy.
Likewise, special educators and disability service personnel need not
come to a consensus about how to view disability or a person considered
to have a disability. Moreover, democratic living not only does not require
such an agreement on one model. To the contrary, it thrives and relies on the
development and interaction of a wide range of perspectives and concepts
from persons situated in numerous positions within the political fray. It is
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Three Models of Disability 357

therefore best to view the above analyses of the three models of disability
as something other than a competition for the one, best way of thinking.
We are better off appreciating the best of each and criticizing the worst of
each, all the while realizing that our democracy is fortified by the thought-
fulness and ingenuity that goes into making and remaking models over
time.
What is most fortuitous to democracy is the constancy of practical in-
vention, the ongoing intellectual and conversational process that refuses to
allow one model or theory to rule and rule out all others. In some corners of
the current professional discourse, the functional limitations model has been
enshrined as “scientific” and therefore the only useful way of approaching
disability issues (e.g., Jacobson et al., 1995; Kauffman, 1987, 1999). To the
pragmatist, this kind of action privileges a particular brand of social science
above democracy, a confusion over ethical purposes and social ideals of so-
cial knowledge. The knowledge produced by any group of researchers or
scholars must be viewed as simultaneously worthy of our critical attention
and provisional, perspective-based, ideologically loaded, and epistemologi-
cally limited. No knowledge by its very nature or form rises to the top. All
must be available for consideration in light of specific goals and contextual
efforts.
The vibrant social process of “creative democracy” as embraced by the
pragmatists relies on an inviting and open discursive field in which the wide
varieties of concepts, approaches, models, and perspectives are heard, val-
ued, and scrutinized for practical implications. Such a rich dialogue of con-
ceptual creation and renewal keeps intellectuals and helping professionals
openminded, flexible, humble, and creative. Thinkers and doers can con-
tinuously contribute to the daily making of democracy by engaging in the
vibrant and indeterminate social process of innovation, critique, and con-
ceptual reformation that keeps freedom of thought and action alive.

REFERENCES

Barker, R. G., Wright, B. A., and Gonick, M. R. (1946). Adjustment to Physical Handicap
and Illness: A Survey of the Social Psychology of Physique and Disability, Social Science
Research Council, New York.
Berger, P., and Luckmann, T. (1967). The Social Construction of Reality, Anchor, New York.
Bernstein, R. J. (1985). Dewey, democracy: The task ahead of us. In Rajchman, J., and West, C.
(eds.), Post-analytic Philosophy, Columbia University Press, New York.
Bogdan, R., and Taylor, S. J. (1989). The social construction of humanness: Relationships with
severely disabled people. Soc. Problems 36(2): 135–148.
Bogdan, R., and Taylor, S. J. (1994). The Social Meaning of Mental Retardation. Teachers College
Press, New York.
Charlton, J. (1998). Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment,
University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

358 Danforth

Cullinan, D., Epstein, M. H., and Lloyd, J. W. (1991). Evaluation of conceptual models of
behavior disorders. Behav. Disord. 16(2): 148–157.
Danforth, S. (in press). Pragmatism and the scientific validation of professional practices in
American special education. Disabil. Soc. 14: 6.
Danforth, S., and Navarro, V. (1998). Speech acts: Sampling the social construction of mental
retardation in everyday life. Ment. Retard. 36(1): 31–43.
Danforth, S., and Rhodes, W. C. (1997). Deconstructing disability: A philosophy for inclusion.
Remedial Spec. Educ. 18(6): 357–366.
Davis, L. J. (1997). The Disability Studies Reader, Routledge, New York.
Deutsch, M. (1973). The Resolution of Conflict: Constructive and Destructive Processes, Yale
University Press, New Haven.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education, The Macmillan Company, New York.
Dewey, J. (1939). Freedom and Culture, Capricorn Books, New York.
Dewey, J. (1930). Individualism, Old and New, Minton, Balch and Company, New York.
Dossa, P. A. (1992). Ethnography as narrative discourse: Community integration of people with
developmental disabilities. Int. J. Rehabil. Res. 15: 11–14
Ferguson, P. M., Ferguson, D. L., and Taylor, S. J. (eds.) (1992). Interpreting Disability: A Qual-
itative Reader, Teachers College Press, New York.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Gartner, D., and Lipsky, A. (1987). Beyond special education: Toward a quality system for all
students. Harvard Educ. Rev. 57: 367–390.
Hahn, H. (1983). Paternalism and public policy. Society 20: 36–46.
Hahn, H. (1985). Introduction: Disability policy and the problem of discrimination. Am. Behav.
Sci. 28(3): 293–318.
Hahn, H. (1987). Advertising the acceptably employable image: Disability and capitalism. Pol-
icy Stud. J. 15(3): 551–570.
Heward, W. L. (1996). Exceptional Children: An Introduction to Special Education, Prentice-
Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Jacobson, J. W., Mulick, J. A., and Schwartz, A. A. (1995). A history of facilitated communica-
tion: Science, pseudoscience, and anti-science. Am. Psychol. 50: 750–765.
Jahnukainen, M. (1999). Winners or Losers? A ten-year follow-up of twenty-three former
students from special classes for the maladjusted in Finland. Young–Nordic J. Youth Res.
7(1): 36–49.
James, W. (1907). Pragmatism, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis.
Jones, S. R. (1996). Toward inclusive theory: Disability as social construction. Naspa J. 33(4):
347–354.
Kauffman, J. M. (1987). Research in special education: A commentary. Remedial Spec. Educ.
8(6): 57–62.
Kauffman, J. M. (1999). How we prevent the prevention of emotional behavioral disorders.
Except. Child. 65(4): 448–468.
Kauffman, J. M., and Hallahan, D. P. (1995). The Illusion of Full Inclusion : A Comprehensive
Critique of a Special Education Bandwagon, Pro-Ed, Austin, TX.
Kauffman J. M., Lloyd, J. W., Baker, J., and Reidel, T. M. (1995). Inclusion of all students
with emotional or behavioral disorders? Let’s think again. Phi Delta Kappan 76(7): 542–
46.
Kliewer, C., and Biklen, D. (1996). Labeling: Who wants to be called retarded? In Stainback,
W., and Stainback, S. (eds.), Controversial Issues Confronting Special Education: Divergent
Perspectives. Allyn and Bacon, Needham Heights, MA, pp. 83–95.
Linton, S. (1998). Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity, New York University Press,
New York.
Linton, S., Mello, S., and O’Neill, J. (1995). Disability studies: Expanding the parameters of
diversity. Radical Teacher 47: 4–10.
McDermott, R., and Varenne, H. (1995). Culture as disability. Anthropol. Educ. Q. 26(3): 325–
348.
Mercer, J. R. (1973). Labeling the Mentally Retarded, University of California Press, Berkeley.
P1: GKW/RKP P2: GKW
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities [jodd] PP265-345878 September 25, 2001 14:58 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Three Models of Disability 359

Meyerson, L. (1988). The social psychology of physical disability: 1948 and 1988. J. Soc. Issues
44(1): 173–188.
Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton University Press, Princeton,
NJ.
Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Rorty, R. (1991a). Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Rorty, R. (1991b). Essays on Heidegger and Others, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Rorty, R. (1998). Truth and Progress, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Ryan, A. (1995). John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism, Norton, New York.
Scotch, R. K. (1988). Disability as the basis for a social movement: Advocacy and the politics
of definition. J. Soc. Issues 44(1): 159–172.
Simpson, R. L. (1995). Children and youth with autism in an age of reform: A perspective on
current issues. Behav. Disord. 21(1): 7–20.
Skrtic, T. M. (ed.). (1996). Disability and Democracy: Reconstructing (special) Education for
Postmodernity, Teachers College Press, New York.
Sleeter, C. (1986). Learning disabilities: The social construction of a special education category.
Excep. Child. 53(1): 46–54.
Smelter, R. W., Rasch, B. W., and Yudewitz, G. J. (1994). Thinking of inclusion for all special
needs students? Better think again. Phi Delta Kappan 76(1): 35–38.
Stuhr, J. J. (1993). Philosophy and the Reconstruction of Culture : Pragmatic Essays After Dewey,
State University of New York Press, Albany.
Thomson, R. G. (1995). Integrating disability studies in the existing curriculum: The example
of ‘Women and Literature’ at Howard University. Radical Teacher 47: 15–21.
Wang, M. C., Reynolds, M. C., and Walberg, H. J. (1988). Integrating the children of the second
system. Phi Delta Kappan 70: 248–251.
West, C. (1985). The Politics of American neo-pragmatism, In Rajchman, J., and West, C. (eds.),
Post-Analytic Philosophy, Columbia University Press, New York.
West, C. (1989).The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism, University
of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.
West, C. (1993). Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America, Routledge, New York.
Westbrook, R. B. (1991). John Dewey and American Democracy, Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, NY.