This article investigated what the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum can contribute to the issue of inclusion as a new theoretical framework for special education. By posing the question: "What is the purpose of inclusion?", I have proposed to answer this query by investigating how the capability approach is able to…

The main objective of the article was to investigate the claim that the capability approach fares better with an understanding of disability as presented by the World Health Organization's "International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health" (ICF) than by the social model, which has been promoted within disability studies. Scholars…

This paper discusses various approaches to the phenomenon of disability in relation to special needs. Ever since disability researchers launched the social model of disability and criticised the field of special education for preserving an understanding of disability in accord with a medical model, the special education field has been in a state…

A survey of 163 students with disabilities at the University of Oslo (Norway) found that respondents expressed unmet needs, such as a lack of proximity in services and adjustments offered, lack of information about services to which they were entitled, difficult routines in relation to services and examinations, and problems specific to each…

This paper questions the claim that able-bodied individuals cannot understand the experience of disability and that disablism is a socially created form of oppression. It examines social constructivist and social creativist views of disability and argues against the social creativist view as the only fruitful perspective concerning disability.…