The Social Model of Disability as a Threshold Concept: Troublesome Knowledge and Liminal Spaces in Social Work Education

Abstract

This paper draws on the notion of threshold concepts to consider the way in which disability studies has the capacity to transform social work students' understandings of disability and therefore influence their practice. Most students enter social work programmes with the professed aim of ‘helping’ and so to be confronted by an approach (the social model of disability) and a body of research and theorising (disability studies) that challenges their taken-for-granted assumption that social work practice is ‘helpful’ is unsettling and can lead to resistance. The purpose of this article is to interrogate practice on a social work programme where a commitment to social model practice is explicated and embedded with the purpose of identifying what it is we want students to ‘get’, whether they find this troubling and how they can be effectively supported as they move through liminal spaces in social work education.

Keywords:

• Disability Studies
• Social Work Education
• Threshold Concepts

Notes

^[1] The biennial international disability studies conference held at Lancaster University regularly attracts over 230 delegates and papers from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds.

^[2] In this approach practice is driven by compliance with legislation or policy directives rather than a commitment to values or principles. It is characterised by a tick box or task-orientated approach that does little more than meet basic standards.

^[3] Social work has an ambiguous and contested status (Young and Burgess, 2005, p. 1) as an academic discipline with debate about whether it constitutes a discipline or a multi-disciplinary field of study. Similar debates continue in relation to disability studies (Goodley, 2010).