ABSTRACT
Particular types and forms of knowledge have been privileged by physiotherapists as the profession emerged and became established as a conventional health provider in English-speaking countries. These notions have contributed to the construction of social understandings of normality and disability, as well as of children and childhood. The disabled child began to be seen as having rehabilitative potential after World War I in tandem with the emergence of physiotherapy as a distinct profession. Mechanisms employed to rehabilitate the ‘other’ have contributed to the construction of a professional identity and disciplinary boundaries for physiotherapy. Contemporary physiotherapy practices that impact disabled children in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally lean heavily on historical understandings of the disabled child as embodying potential. In this chapter, we explore how rehabilitation practices both deployed and were influenced by discourses of potential in shaping the services that continue to dominate normative attitudes towards children.
