The social construction of ability and disability: I. Profile types of Latino children identified as language learning disabled.

During the course of an ethnographic study of a bilingual special education classroom, three profile types of students emerged, ranging from students with severe language learning disabilities to students with normal abilities. The study points out the inadequacy of a medical model view of student abilities and disabilities--a view that underestimates the communicative and academic competence of bilingual students. Concurrently, the results support a contextual performance view--a view that acknowledges the role of instructional context in revealing the upper or lower range of students' communicative and academic competence. The study further suggests some contextual features of instruction that are associated with students from all profile types showing their best in terms of language and literacy skills.