Disability Stigma And Children S Developing Selves

Guided by developmental cultural psychology, this volume focuses on understandings and responses to disability and stigmatization from the perspectives of educators practicing in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Synthesizing research that spanned over a decade, this volume seeks to understand disabilities in different developmental and cultural contexts. The research presented in this book found that educators from all four cultural groups expressed strikingly similar concerns about the impact of stigmatization on the emerging cultural self, both with children with disabilities and their typically developing peers, while also describing culturally nuanced socialization goals and practices pertaining to inclusive education. In providing a multicultural view of common challenges in classrooms from around the world, this book provides important lessons for the improvement of children's lives, as well as the development of theory, policy, and programs that are culturally sensitive and sustainable.

Guided by developmental cultural psychology, this volume focuses on understandings and responses to disability and stigmatization from the perspectives of educators practicing in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Synthesizing research that spanned over a decade, this volume seeks to understand disabilities in different developmental and cultural contexts. The research presented in this book found that educators from all four cultural groups expressed strikingly similar concerns about the impact of stigmatization on the emerging cultural self, both with children with disabilities and their typically developing peers, while also describing culturally nuanced socialization goals and practices pertaining to inclusive education. In providing a multicultural view of common challenges in classrooms from around the world, this book provides important lessons for the improvement of children's lives, as well as the development of theory, policy, and programs that are culturally sensitive and sustainable.

This book examines how intellectual disability is affected by stigma and how this stigma has developed. Around two per cent of the world's population have an intellectual disability but their low visibility in many places bears witness to their continuing exclusion from society. This prejudice has an impact on the family of those with an intellectual disability as well as the individual themselves and affects the well-being and life chances of all those involved. This book provides a framework for tackling intellectual disability stigma in institutional processes, media representations and other, less overt, settings. It also highlights the anti-stigma interventions which are already in place and the central role that self-advocacy must play.

‘Some years ago I read the phrase "the spontaneous revulsion to the deformed". The phrase seemed to be both potent and provocative: Was there a spontaneous revulsion to disabilities in children or did such conditions evoke a more compassionate response?’ Originally published in 1978, the problems of the disabled were no longer confined to the medical and educational professionals, but had become the concern of the community as a whole. Using terminology very much of the time, the author shows how attitudes towards different kinds of disability had developed at the time; they varied both regionally and by social class, sometimes calling into question the accepted ‘facts’ about the distribution of a particular condition. Most importantly, the author examines these attitudes together with many other social and psychological factors in relation to their impact on the social behaviour and developing self-image of the disabled child. It becomes clear that the dangers of categorization and the difficulties in overcoming stigma have a profound influence on the education and socialization of disabled children. This book will be of historical interest to students and teachers of psychology, education, social work and rehabilitation; and it will provide insight for parents and all those concerned with the care and development of the disabled child about how far we have come.

Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

In Learning Without Lessons, David F. Lancy fills a rather large gap in the field of child development and education. Drawing on focused, empirical studies in cultural psychology, ethnographic accounts of childhood, and insights from archaeological studies, Lancy offers the first attempt to review the principles and practices for fostering learning in children that are found in small-scale, pre-industrial communities across the globe and through history. His analysis yields a consistent and coherent "pedagogy" that can be contrasted sharply with the taken-for-granted pedagogy found in the West. The practices that are rare or absent from indigenous pedagogy include teachers, classrooms, lessons, verbal instruction, testing, grading, praise, and the use of symbols. Instead, field studies document the prevalence of self-guided learners who rely on observation, listening, learning in play from peers the hands-on use of real tools and, learning through voluntary participation in everyday activities such as foraging. Aiming to reverse the customary relation between western and non-Western theories or ideas about child learning and development, this book concludes that the pedagogy found in communities before the advent of schooling differs in very significant ways from that practiced in schools and in the homes of schooled parents.

This book explores Positive Youth Development (PYD) in Roma ethnic minority youth. Standing apart from current volumes, this book focuses on the Roma ethnic minority -- one of the most marginalized and oppressed minority groups in Europe -- and on strengths and resources for optimal well-being in the community. The international and multidisciplinary contributors to this book address the complexities of Roma life in a variety of cultural settings, exploring how key developmental processes and person-context interactions can contribute to optimal and successful adaptation. The conclusions clarify how the PYD of ethnic minority children and youth may be fostered based on the empirical findings reported in the volume. The book draws on core theoretical models of PYD and theories of normative development from the perspective of developmental science to highlight the applicability of these frameworks to Roma groups. With a special focus on cultural, contextual, and socio-economic characteristics of Roma, this project also aims to provide a better understanding of what does and what does not contribute to the success of youth in oppressed minority groups.

Shame, the quintessential human emotion, received little attention during the years in which the central forces believed to be motivating us were identified as primitive instincts like sex and aggression. Now, redressing the balance, there is an explosion of interest in the self-conscious emotion. Much of our psychic lives involve the negotiation of shame, asserts Michael Lewis, internationally known developmental and clinical psychologist. Shame is normal, not pathological, though opposite reactions to shame underlie many conflicts among individuals and groups, and some styles of handling shame are clearly maladaptive. Illustrating his argument with examples from everyday life, Lewis draws on his own pathbreaking studies and the theory and research of many others to construct the first comprehensive and empirically based account of emotional development focused on shame. In this paperback edition, Michael Lewis adds a compelling new chapter on stigma in which he details the process in which stigmatization produces shame.