Conductive education: thirty years on

Emerson, Anne; Holroyd, Fiona

Abstract

In 1989 Mike Oliver’s Current Issue about Conductive Education (CE) enabled disability activists and scholars to consider educational ‘tools’ and cures as potentially oppressive, and he expressed his view that CE was based on a set of assumptions about normality. Challenging the assumption that disabled people wished to be able to walk, Oliver led the way in demonstrating how barriers existed in society, not within the individual. Oliver’s social model fosters choice, empowerment and opportunities for maximising one’s potential, and we suggest that CE is one vehicle which offers these opportunities to young disabled people, supported here by the voice of a CE ‘graduate’ who wanted to share her experiences. Building on the importance of Oliver’s pioneering re-think of disability, we draw on the field of neuroscience to counter the main points in his critique that there is no evidential support for CE and that it is ideologically untenable.

Citation

Emerson, A., & Holroyd, F. (2020). Conductive education: thirty years on. Disability and Society, 35(8), 1349-1354. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2019.1685791

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 6, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Nov 7, 2019
• Publication Date: Sep 13, 2020
• Deposit Date: May 29, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 5, 2024
• Journal: Disability and Society
• Print ISSN: 0968-7599
• Electronic ISSN: 1360-0508
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 35
• Issue: 8
• Pages: 1349-1354
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2019.1685791
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/35159640
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2019.1685791