Beyond a Biomedical and Social Model of Disability: A Cultural-Historical Approach

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Two opposing models of disability exist; the medical model and the social model. The medical model focuses on disability as the result of one or more physical defects of the individual body; while the social model focuses on how barriers in society construct disability by limiting the participation of particular groups of people. This chapter introduces a disability model based on Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theories. The model depicts how human development is formed through a dialectical process between biological maturation (the natural line of development) and participation in cultural forms (the cultural line of development). Under normal circumstances, for a typical child, the natural and the cultural line of child development support each other. However, this is not the case for a child with disabilities. The often problematic development of children with disabilities arises and develops from an incongruence between, on one hand, the biological development of the child and on the other, the structure of cultural practices (in institutions, families, etc.) in which the child is living. Furthermore, the chapter introduces to cultural-historical developmental theories and central concepts such as zone of proximal development, the child as social agent, the social situation of development, motives and demands.