Thank you Susanne. I'm particularly interested in the stereotype that seems to prevail in some areas of society that a person cannot be gifted (e.g. intelligent) if they have disability.

Here are two quick suggestions:

Dowse, L. (2009) ‘“Some people are never going to be able to do that.” Challenges for people with intellectual disability in the 21st century’, Disability & Society, Vol. 24, No. 5, pp. 571-584.

Goodley, D. (2001) ‘‘Learning Difficulties’, the Social Model of Disability and Impairment: challenging epistemologies’, Disability & Society, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 207-231.

Other studies by these authors could also be of interest.

Thanks Teodor they are most useful. Regards, Michelle

McMaugh, A. (2011). En/countering disablement in school life in Australia: children talk about peer relations and living with illness and disability. Disability & Society, (December 2011), 853 – 866. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09687599.2011.618740

This is a very interesting work in the same area, it focuses on the value of friendship, but maybe it can give you some pointers.

Thank you Boris that article was very informative particularly in the area of disablism/ableism. I'm also interested in looking at how children with disabilities are frequently treated/perceived as inferior intellectually so the apparent paradoxical notion that a child with a disability can also be considered gifted.

Maybe the Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies (there's a Sage version, but Routledge is more updated) help you. Bryan G Cook has publications on the attitude of peers towards student with disabilities. In my personal experience i didn't found that paradox, but i think it depends on the specific area or subject the child can be found gifted.

Thank you Boris I'll have a look at those I have plenty on giftedness and disability but very limited in the area of disability. I'm trying to merge the two areas together in my research study.

HI Michelle

I teach a paper that attempts to bring these two concepts? category groups? together - twice exceptional can be used to denote 'disabled and (cognitively) able' if you see what I mean. There is a lot of tensions here that I have tried to reconcile through use of a social constructionist perspective. Two books I have found useful background reading are

Ronnell, A. (2003). Stupidity. Chicago, University of Illinois

Kumari-Campbell, F. (2009). Contours of Ableism - the production of disability and abledness, McMillan.

Al the best with your research study

These are both on labelling but might be of use:

Boyle, C. (2014). Labelling in special education: Where do the benefits lie? In A. Holliman (Ed.) The Routledge International Companion to Educational Psychology (pp. 213-221). London: Routledge.

Lauchlan, F., & Boyle C. (2007). Is the use of labels in special education helpful? Support For Learning, 22(1), 36-42. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9604.2007.00443.x

Good luck with your work,

Chris

Thanks Chris much appreciated.

I think the issue may arise from the confusion over the normal distribution of intelligence. I accept the contested nature of the term. Binet's intelligence tests were originally created to locate the need for resources to allocate children who were experiencing difficulty. The IQ test was later taken up by Terman in the US as a means to screen potential entrants to that land of opportunity.

Learning difficulty has also sometimes been conflated with disability in its definition. In the UK the legal definition of having a special educational need included the idea that a person with a disability would have a difficulty in learning if appropriate provision was not made to enable their access to education. This has since been changed.

It may be that this association of disability with the lower end of the IQ scale is still pervasive and is perhaps linked in with your use of the term 'gifted' which is a new testament term which has been criticised by John White amongst others in his paper - 'The myth of multiple intelligence'.

http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/1263/1/WhiteJ2005HowardGardner1.pdf

Some of my students will ask - as senior figures have also- 'You have talked about the needs of those experiencing difficulty and /or disability - what about the needs of those at the other end of the ability scale the 'Gifted and Talented'? As if it is 'only fair' to consider the needs of the 'top end' of the bell curve of intelligence. This, in fact, was the basis for a policy in the UK. ---

see Sue Soan's article on the TTRB

http://www.ttrb3.org.uk/glossary-item-gifted-and-talented-education-gate/

Regarding labels and stereotypes, I would echo the idea of George Kelly (1955) The Psychology of Personal Constructs - that some constructs can stop thinking whilst others can be a catalyst for thinking. It perhaps depends on whether terms used in assessment (what ever level of sophistication that takes) are explanatory or merely descriptive and used for excuses rather than to enable the individual to progressive and/or participate.

I think that a focus on participation, challenge and progress which is broadly in line with the ideas of Assessment for Learning may be more useful than solely focusing on within learner attributions. (http://www.ttrb3.org.uk/the-role-of-teachers-in-the-assessment-of-learning/)

If you still want a largely social treatment try 'Separating, Losing, and Excluding Children: by Tom Billington - Routledge/Falmer, 2000

Here is another....adult [me] tbi Persons with Adult‐Onset Head Injury: A Crucial Resource for Feminist Philosophers

KATE LINDEMANN

Hypatia A Journal of Feminist Philosophy (Impact Factor: 0.25). 10/2001; 16(4):105 - 123. DOI:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2001.tb00755.x

It may be online here at Reseach Gate. Shelly Tremain i, Canada has done a lot on disability .... Kate

Hope this helps....

Tom Shakespeare has written some interesting points about impairment and disability, look in the 1996 book Barnes, C. Mercer, G.Exploring the Divide

Publisher The Disability Press Leeds

Shakespeare, T. (2008) Debating Disability, Journal of medical ethics, 34(1), 11-14