6 Categories of Disability Identity
(Johnstone, 2004)
In this category identities are forced upon students from an outside source, often resulting in a lack of self-discovery and stigmatizing terms.
Students are comfortable telling others about their disability however still feel the need to overachieve or overcompensate to prove that they are not hindered by their disability or to deemphasize the weight of it.
This occurs when disability communities move away from a rehabilitative, needing to be "fixed" structure to a emphasis on shared culture structure.
When a student is in this category they have grown pride for their disability, or may have become fully immersed. This is shown through reclaiming the body or legitimatizing their experience.
Here students explore the intersectionality of their disability identity with other identity groups.
This last category holds the shared cultural experiences that students with disabilities find either within their specific communities or disability communities at large.
Purpose of this Framework
The use of this framework is to describe in broad strokes ways to identify where students may be in their identity formation. This is important to know as a practitioner because it will affect the way a student shows up in spaces.
Johnstone also describes in this theory that students may move from one category to another and that it is affected by the personal and social. This means that the way students show up may also change depending on the social or environmental context, such as, is there primarily able-bodied students in the space or how accessible the location was to those who use mobility aids.
Identifying where students may lie as well as how the environment might affect their presentation is vital as student affairs practitioners expand their programming and resources to be more accessible.