The use and abuse of models of disability

Throughout history, theorists have made use of the technology of the day! t o provide explanatory models of the behaviour they observe in order to prov ide an improved understanding of human behaviour. Bax (1998) describes the use of models of disability as not particularly helpful ill relation to the treatment of children with physical disabilities. It is the purpose of thi s paper to show that models do have their place within disability research and the implications of using the medical and social models of disability, together with two models from developmental psychology, namely the transact ional model and systems theory, will be discussed. It is argued by the auth ors that the usage of these models can aid understanding of disability in b oth research and clinical settings.