Conceptualising disability and education in the South: challenges for research

Focusing on a southern context, this paper aims to discuss some of the methodological challenges underpinning the “Disability, Education and Poverty Project” (DEPP). The DEPP aims to explore the role that education plays in the lives of individuals with disabilities living in poverty and aims to understand the effect of education on social, human and learning outcomes.

This document states that there is increasing evidence to suggest that being poor dramatically increases the likelihood of being born with impairment. Being poor also increases one’s probability of becoming impaired and then disabled. Disability is a multi-dimensional and complex construct and there is no single universally accepted, unproblematic definition of disability. Disability is defined in different ways in different countries and these definitions differ and change within a country with evolving legal, political and social discourses. In the northern context there is a steadily growing body of literature which addresses issues related to the education of young people with disabilities. However, literature addressing educational outcomes for young people with disabilities is relatively non-existent in southern contexts. Moreover, exploring the outcomes of education for this group in these contexts is particularly challenging.

Key concluding points are:

• in attempting to address issues of disability and poverty, one cannot overlook the many similarities inherent in these two concepts and the similar ways in which debates around conceptualising poverty and disability have evolved
• over the past few decades, understandings about disability have moved away from an exclusive focus on factors within the individual to a greater appreciation of the barriers that are inherent in society 
• both poverty and disability can be regarded as symptoms of the way that society is organised and how various existing structures and processes continue to marginalise and isolate certain groups of people 
• education has an important role not only in shaping the lives of people with disabilities, but also in shaping the perception of those around them. A research project bringing together a focus on poverty, disability and education will hopefully make some worthy contributions to the field.