Aportes desde la investigación formativa a la producción en Fonoaudiología: el caso de una universidad colombiana

PURPOSE: This research identified intellectual production regarding the subject disability, developed at the Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences program at the Universidad del Valle, Colombia, during 1996-2008, establishing relationships between historical developments of the disability concept and focusing on its social approach models and its relationship with the work of this discipline. METHODS: Descriptive study that included all theses that were found in the academic program during the evaluation period (n=98). The theoretical study of the documents included six variables: disability model, intervention components, fields of activity, performance areas of the discipline, study type, and population. RESULTS: The rehabilitation model of disability (53%) prevailed over the social models (32%), although the later have increased in recent years. The subject areas found were language (32%), professional issues (24%), speech (20%), communication (13%), and hearing (11%). The intervention component of habilitation/rehabilitation (41%) prevailed over the promotion and prevention (33%), and there was a strong positivist tendency (65%) and a timid position for hermeneutical approaches (21%). Forty three percent of the population emphasized the occupational role. CONCLUSION: It was found a greater number of theses framed in the rehabilitation model, but the results showed the consolidation of a research culture towards the social models of disability in recent years. It is evidenced that Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences seeks the rehabilitation of communicative and linguistic processes of subjects, with an upward path in the direction of potentiating social and cultural variables.