Instruction!

FILLER TEXT

Instruction:

Students are expected to write and submit weekly journal entry throughout the duration of the semester. The journal entry is an opportunity to reflect on the topics of disability issues that we will address during the course. In these reflective entries, students will select a disability issue from the weeks module and elaborate on how their own critical thinking, experiences, class discussions, the course readings, and current events relate to this issue. Through the journal entries, students will demonstrate their understanding of the issues discussed and the readings from the learning resources for the week, and use these ideas and reflections to enhance their own awareness and understanding of disability studies. Each Journal entry should be about 1 page in length but no more than 2 pages and 1.5 line-space and should have listed a minimum of three in-text citations and three academic references.

Disability culture and Normative cultural values

Each culture is built on a foundation of values and beliefs that provide a common bond among its members. According to Flores (2000;136:14–23.), service providers from all sectors of society must be able to identify those values and beliefs that might affect the individual’s care and social interaction and must strive to acknowledge and accommodate those values in the service provider- consumer encounter.

Gill FILLER TEXT(1995;15:16–19.) listed some of the values that underpin the disability culture. These values include:

1. acceptance of human differences,
2. a matter-of-fact orientation toward helping and being helped,
3. a tolerance for lack of resolution, and dealing with the unpredictable,
4. a sense of humor about disability
5. skill in managing multiple problems,
6. a carefully honed capacity for closure in interpersonal communication,
7. flexible, adaptive, resourceful approaches to tasks and problems,
8. an understanding that needs are different depending on the type of disability and the level of needs and dependence, and
9. interdependence valued more than independence (the opposite of the value system in the able-bodied population).

The medical model of disability emphasizes “normalizing” the individual with a disability, which contrasts with the first value cited in the Social Model of Disability. Recommending prosthesis for cosmetic purposes when another more functional alternative is available or recommending a cochlear implant, when this would constitute the imposition of the cultural value of normalcy onto the member of a culture in which such normalcy is not highly valued as acceptance might be in some cases.