ABSTRACT
As has been discussed, by defining disability as a function of the reciprocal interaction between the environment and the capacities of a person, the focus of the ‘problem’ to be solved for students to learn shifts from being a deficit within the student to being the relationship between the student’s functioning and the environment and, subsequently, to the identification and design of supports to address the student’s functioning within that context. Historic models of special education services determined eligibility for special education and created the ‘programs’ in which to deliver those services based on student labels, with a label serving as a proxy, essentially, for a presumed set of common deficits. Students were grouped by label, in homogenous and often segregated settings, and provided an educational program based upon presumptive need as a function of the category or level of impairment. Social-ecological models of disability, in contrast, focus on the design of personalized supports instead of programs.
