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The PMLD Ambiguity: Articulating the Life-Worlds of Children with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities

Author(s) : Ben Simmons, Author(s) : Debbie Watson

Reviews and Endorsements

‘In this affirmative text, Ben Simmons and Debbie Watson seek to critique and oppose traditional psychologising explanations of disability and childhood and, in their place, open up phenomenological alternatives. In short, their work extends our understanding of what it means to be human in educational and social contexts: re-siting disability as an opportunity for rethinking how educators understand the human subjects of their interventions.’
—Professor Dan Goodley, School of Education, University of Sheffield

‘The most vulnerable children and adults in society (those with profound and multiple learning disabilities) need understanding and recognition that, at a fundamental level, the “inert behaviour” of children in special schools or adults in care provisions may be badges of resistance to inappropriate environments rather than an “inability to engage with the world or learn”. This book offers parents and professionals support to challenge existing frameworks of understanding PMLD and to develop better ways of “seeing” children and adults as “able”. It provides the basis to develop new practice, which engages with these vulnerable people as “people with identities”, rather than as “disabled objects” who happen to have the trappings of humanity.’
—Phil Bayliss, PhD, Independent Educational Consultant