ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of how far, in what ways and how effectively learning difficulties has been theorised within disability studies. It provides an examination of the concept of impairment–a highly contested area, but key to different ways of understanding the experiences of people with learning difficulties. From the 1960s through to at least the 1990s the dominant theoretical framework within the academic study of learning difficulties, and within policymaking and service delivery for people with learning difficulties, was normalisation: arguably this is the case. Disability studies have also been charged with failing to take researchers with learning difficulties seriously. A potential difficulty for the inclusion of people with learning difficulties in the social model has been the latter’s focus on the body as ‘the site of impairment’. Disability studies promote emancipatory research in which disabled people are in control. The social construction of learning difficulties has been traced across centuries.
