Barriers to inclusion: Incorporating the social model in the study of children’s understanding of disability

How can we improve children’s attitudes toward and their treatment of disabled peers? One way is by targeting the model that non-disabled children hold about disability, which in Western cultures tends to be that the challenges disabled people face arise from intrinsic factors, or characteristics inherent to the individual (i.e., the medical model of disability). In this paper, we describe a model of disability that highlights external factors contributing to the challenges disabled people face (i.e., the social model). Drawing on research showing that children’s attitudes toward other stigmatized groups can be improved as they learn about structural explanations for group disparities, we suggest that exposing children to the social model of disability may have similarly beneficial effects on the ways they think about and treat disabled peers. We highlight some challenges that this approach may encounter–challenges that, we argue, cognitive developmentalists are well-positioned to address.