שולחן עגול בנושא סטיגמה

1. Professor Lisa Marks Woolfson
School of Psychological Sciences and Health
The influence of societal stereotypes
on attitudes and behaviour of parents
and teachers towards children with ID

2. Parents
tolerate
problematic
behaviour as
being part of
child’s disability
Daytime/night-
time behaviour
problems
Parents
overprotect
child
Passive,
dependent
behaviour
Parents of a disabled
child should make up
to her for the tragedy
of not being able-
bodied
Disability is a
medical
problem
Disabled people
are dependent
and need
protection and
help from
others
The disabled child will
always be dependent on
her parents for help and
their role is to protect her
from any challenges,
whether physical, social
or emotional
Parents of a disabled
child will have to cope
with developmental,
health and behavioural
problems that are an
inevitable part of the
medical condition
Parents of a disabled child
cannot change much
about the situation
themselves. Professional
interventions are required
for this.
Disability is a
tragedy
Woolfson, L. (2004). Family well-being and disabled children: a psychosocial model of disability-related
child behaviour problems. British Journal of Health Psychology, 9, 1-13.

3. Johnson et al 2009 ADHD
Whittingham et al 2006 ASD
Robinson & Richdale 2004 ID
Keenan et al 2007 ID
Disability
viewed as
cause of
behaviour
problems

4. But what I learned was that if I
say ‘get off the chair’ and I wait…
what others would say too long,
she will get off the chair. And I
said to the teachers, ‘whatever
you ask her to do, wait more
than seems polite, and you’ll
often find she will respond’. And
they did use that because I think
it takes a long time. People with
Down Syndrome, they can’t
process quickly.
Jacobs, M., Woolfson, L., & Hunter, S. (2015). Attributions of stability, control and responsibility: How
parents of children with ID view their child’s problematic behaviour and its causes. Journal of Applied
Research in Intellectual Disabilities. Early View.

5. internal stable uncontrollable causes
Right at this moment, things are
definitely getting worse and there is
no light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s not like if you have a typical
child, you will say ‘oh he will grow
out of it’.
Jacobs, M., Woolfson, L., & Hunter, S. (2015). Attributions of stability, control and responsibility: How
parents of children with ID view their child’s problematic behaviour and its causes. Journal of Applied
Research in Intellectual Disabilities. Early View.

6. Group x parent controllability
Woolfson, L., Taylor, R., & Mooney, L. (2010). Parental attributions of controllability as a
moderator of the relationship between developmental disability and behaviour problems.
Child: Care, Health and Development, 37, 184–194.

7. reframing
I think before I would
have wrapped her up
in cotton wool. I treat
her differently now
than I would have.
Woolfson, L. (1999 ). Using a model of transactional developmental regulation to evaluate the
effectiveness of an early intervention programme for preschool children with motor impairments. Child:
Care, Health and Development, 25, 55-79.
If she wanted anything,
everything was put on
hold, including her
brother…..
I realized we would have
to change our behaviour
and told my husband.

8. ParentingParenting
paradoxparadox
Woolfson, L. (2005). Disability and the
parenting paradox. The Psychologist, 18,
421-422.

10. Woolfson, L., Grant, E., & Campbell, L. (2007). A comparison of special, general and
support teachers’ controllability and stability attributions for children’s
difficulties in learning. Educational Psychology, 27, 295-306.
Controllability interaction plot
Support needs
no special supportreceives support
Controllabilitymeanscore
3.4
3.2
3.0
2.8
2.6
2.4
Teacher group
mainstream
class teacher
special school class
teacher
mainstream learning
support teacher
Main effect for
support needs
F(1,96) = 44.18,
p = .001
Group x support
needs
interaction effect
F(2,96) = 4.24,
p = .017

12. lisa.woolfson@strath.ac.uk