Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026)
Opening Issue

Original articles

It depends… – To what extent do impairment forms influence the medical and social concept of disability? Different results depending on item mode and case vignettes

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5282/breakingbarriers/6

Published 2026-07-10

  • Markus Gebhardt
    • ,
  • Vera Ziegler
    • ,
  • Fabian Zehner
    • ,
  • Michael Schurig
    • ,
  • Pierre-Carl Link
    • ,
  • Anne Schröter-Brickwedde

Markus Gebhardt
Department of Education and Rehabilitation, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität

Vera Ziegler
Department of Education and Rehabilitation, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität

Fabian Zehner
Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Frankfurt

Michael Schurig
Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, TU Dortmund Universität

Pierre-Carl Link
University of Teacher Education in Special Needs, Zürich

Anne Schröter-Brickwedde
Institute of Special Education, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover

Abstract

The implementation of inclusive education requires a social concept of disability so that the barriers in the school are recognized and removed. Although the social model has been taught in university education for a long time, students have difficulties in understanding and applying this concept. The following study uses open-ended items, questionnaires and case vignettes from several special education cases to examine the medical-individual and social concept of disability. It shows that although students have a social concept of disability, they do not apply it consistently across cases but evaluate it differently depending on the case description. The article discusses why the type of impairment or special educational needs play such an important role for special teacher education in Germany. All data and syntax could be found in the OSF.io project https://osf.io/j76t3/.

Keywords

concepts of disability, pre-service teachers, inclusive education

PDF

Author Biography

Markus Gebhardt

Professor

Vera Ziegler

Ph D Student

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