3C: Creating a Culture of Inclusion

3C Project: Creating a Culture of Inclusion in Education

Want to Learn More About Disability Awareness?

Sponsored by the 3C Project and with funding from the US Office of Postsecondary Education, the 3C Project Team is offering a Disability Awareness Workshop to staff and faculty at NLU. Even though this interactive workshop is designed for non-instructional staff, faculty members are more than welcome to attend the workshop. The Disability Awareness Workshop provides information on disabilty stereotypes, ableism, and guidelines for communicating and interacting with people with disabilities in the work place. It will be offered at various campuses throughout the Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer Terms. RSVP required for individuals or groups. To reserve a space for yourself or reserve the workshop for your college, department, or group, please email Susan Gabel at 3Cproject@nl.edu.

Did You Know...

Disability Studies refers generally to the examination of disability as a social, cultural, and political phenomenon. In contrast to clinical, medical, or therapeutic perspectives on disability, Disability Studies focuses on how disability is defined and represented in society. From this perspective, disability is not a characteristic that exists in the person so defined, but a construct that finds its meaning in social and cultural context. Disability Studies is a vibrant and diverse "field" or "area of inquiry."

First of all, it is interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary. No single academic discipline can place a claim on Disability Studies. Rather, the field is informed by scholarship from such different disciplines as history, sociology, literature, political science, law, policy studies, economics, cultural studies, anthropology, geography, philosophy, theology, gender studies, communications and media studies, and the arts.

Second, Disability Studies covers an incredibly diverse group of people. People who are blind, deaf, use wheelchairs, have chronic pain, learn at a slower pace than other people, and so on have vastly different experiences and perspectives. Does it make sense to lump such different human beings under a simple category such as disability? It does—not because they are the same in any biological or philosophical sense, but because society has placed them in this category, with consequences for how they are viewed and treated by the majority presumed to be nondisabled.

Finally, it is usually easier to define what Disability Studies is not (not medicine, rehabilitation, special education, physical or occupational therapy, and professions oriented toward the cure, prevention, or treatment of disabilities) than to specify what it is. Although Disability Studies scholars generally subscribe to the "minority group model" of disability—the view that the status of people as a minority shapes their experiences in society, they agree on little else. For example, some scholars view disability in terms of culture and identity, while others see disability as a label and a social construct (source).