Improving Disabled Students' Learning

Experiences and Outcomes

Mary Fuller, Jan Georgeson, Mick Healey, Alan Hurst, Katie Kelly, Sheila Riddell, Hazel Roberts, Elisabet Weedon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415480482
• eBook ISBN: 9781136033988
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

How do disabled students feel about their time at university? What practices and policies work and what challenges do they encounter? How do they view staff and those providing learning support?

This book sets out to show how disabled students experience university life today. The current generation of students is the first to move through university after the enactment of the Disability Discrimination Act, which placed responsibility on universities to create an inclusive environment for disabled students. The research on which the book is based focuses on a selected group of students with a variety of impairments, as they progress through their degree courses. On the way they encounter different styles of teaching and approaches to learning and assessment. The diversity of their views is reflected in the issues they raise: negotiating identities, dealing with transitions, encountering divergent and sometimes confusing teaching and assessment.

Improving Disabled Students' Learning goes on to ask university staff how they experience these new demands to widen participation and create more inclusive learning climates. It explores their perspectives on their roles in a changing university sector. Offering insights into the workings of universities, as seen by their central participants, its findings will be of great interest to all practitioners who teach and support disabled students, as well as campaigners for an end to discrimination. Crucially, it foregrounds the views of disabled students themselves, giving rise to a complex, contradictory and always fascinating picture of university life from students whose voices are not always heard.

Part I

What is the issue with disabled students’ learning?

Chapter 1

Introduction

Mary Fuller, Sheila Riddell and Elisabet Weedon

Context

In this chapter we set out the concerns that guided the research on which the following chapters are based and the issues which the study investigated. We provide a context in terms of legislation about disability equality; summarise the main themes emerging from research studies about disabled students in higher education at the point when the study began and as it progressed; and give information about the research methodology and methods used to gather material for the following chapters.

First and foremost the book foregrounds the views of disabled students about their experiences as undergraduates, including their experience of teaching, learning and assessment as well as other aspects of student life. It solicits their opinions about what enabled or hindered their full inclusion in university life, the issues that occupied them most as they picked their way through the support they considered appropriate for their needs from what was offered to them. The book endeavours to identify the ways – big and small – in which their daily lives differ from those of their non-disabled peers. Their voices are heard in most chapters, but are the specific focus of chapters 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8.

We asked university staff to discuss their understanding of inclusive higher education, including their take on existing and developing legislative requirements in relation to disabled students. Teaching staff were asked to comment on their understanding of and position towards making reasonable adjustments in teaching and assessment, while senior managers and others with specific roles in the support of disabled students were asked to reflect on institutional policies aimed at the full inclusion of disabled students. Staff perceptions are the basis of chapters 2, 5 and 9 in particular and are incorporated into chapter 4 as well.

Starting points

The social model of disability as developed by Oliver (1990) and Barnes (1991) has been immensely important in shifting the focus of disability research from cataloguing individual deficits to developing a better understanding of the social, political and cultural barriers which exclude and marginalise disabled people. The operation of barriers for students with impairments in higher education has not been extensively explored. We assumed that barriers would involve far more than physical access, that they might operate through the construction of knowledge in a particular discipline, the working practices and common sense assumptions about knowledge, pedagogy and assessment of academics in particular departments and/or the culture of particular institutions. We were guided by the idea that the social model of disability needs to be enriched by a better understanding of the psycho-social effects of impairment (see Thomas, 1998).

The study therefore investigated the relationship between the learning environments provided in particular subject areas with the quality of learning of disabled students in each institution. Research on subject disciplines (Healey and Jenkins, 2003; Hounsell and Anderson, 2008) suggests variable practice along subject discipline lines. In building up from a detailed examination of student experience and the practice of university staff in supporting the learning of disabled students, we built on the Tavistock Institute (Cullen et al., 2002: 47) review of current pedagogic research which recommended ‘further studies that build upwards from practice, and encouragement for more reflexive practice and sharing of practice’.

While it is clearly of great interest to know whether there are more disabled students at university than before, this project focuses rather on whether and in what ways, having obtained a place to study at university, disabled students are fully included in higher education or are marginalised and excluded. This directs our attention to institutional and students’ perceptions of barriers and facilitators, and to notions of ‘fairness’ rather than access. The study is concerned with the inclusion in higher education of disabled undergraduate students, who have been identified as a marginalised group (Baron et al., 1996) and focuses upon their perceptions and experiences of teaching, learning and assessment. Marginalisation may take a variety of forms. For example, within the UK, despite having qualifications comparable to those of other students when entering the same university, disabled students tend to encounter more barriers to learning and achieve poorer outcomes in terms of final degree classifications (Riddell et al., 2002). The research focuses upon disabled students at a critical point in their lives as both learners and future workers, the outcomes of which will have a life-long impact for good or ill on their earning capacity and their position in the labour market.

The project involved a four-year study of disabled students (from January 2004 to December 2007) in four universities within the UK (two that achieved university status pre-1992, before the provisions of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 came into force, and two post-1992) chosen for their different histories, prestige, size, geographical location and subject mix. Disabled students were interviewed and some of their classes observed over three years of their undergraduate careers to provide first-hand evidence of the students’ experiences as undergraduates studying a variety of subjects. Evidence was also gathered from student surveys and staff interviews (see later for further details of our research methods). The research documents each university’s variable achievements in creating environments that are inclusive, thus providing an institutional context in which to understand disabled students’ experiences and perceptions of their time at university.

The policy context

Since September 2002 the Special Education Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) 2001, now Part 4 of the Disability Discrimination Act (hereafter, Part 4 DDA), made it unlawful to discriminate against disabled students and prospective students in all aspects of educational provision. This shifts the focus from recruitment and physical access towards the removal of barriers in relation to teaching, learning and assessment so that disability issues ‘cannot remain closed within a student services arena but must become part of the mainstream learning and teaching debate’ (Adams and Brown, 2000: 8). Much work in the area of disability in higher education focuses exclusively on support services (true also of the USA, see Getzel, 2008) and, while producing useful recommendations on meeting the needs of disabled students, it has had less to say about teaching, learning and assessment, or how to engage academics in incorporating the necessary processes of change in their own practice as lecturers (Hurst, 1998). Although some statistical work has focused on examining disabled students’ learning experience and attainments (Richardson, 2001) there has been little study of the specific institutional and disciplinary/departmental context in which their experience and educational outcomes occur.

Support for disabled students has expanded and is now commonly managed through centralised support units. In line with disability equality legislation, lecturers are expected to make reasonable and anticipatory adjustments to curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices and students are legally entitled to these adjustments. The inclusion of disabled students in higher education has been supported by a number of measures, including the Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) and premium funding intended to improve institutional accessibility. Funding Council initiatives aimed at promoting adjustments to the curriculum and to assessment, as well as quality assurance requirements, have also promoted inclusion. Part 4 DDA is important, since it placed a duty on institutions to make reasonable and anticipatory adjustments for disabled students in relation to teaching, learning and assessment. While the legislation was generally welcomed, some uncertainties remained with regard to what counts as a reasonable adjustment and who is covered by the legislation. The manifestation and impact of these uncertainties can be seen throughout the research in this book.

Apart from disability legislation there have been other major changes within UK higher education, as it has changed from being an elite system into a mass system catering for a diverse student population. These other changes are discussed in relation to universities’ variable response to anti-discrimination legislation in chapter 2, which also investigates the extent to which universities in our study saw widening access to teaching, learning and assessment for disabled students as an essential part of their quality assurance agenda. Over the past two decades, higher education has transformed from an elite to a mass system, with a significant reduction in per capita funding. At the same time, new public management has grown in influence, reflected in regimes of accountability such as the Research Assessment Exercise and Teaching Quality Assessment. For example, the Quality Assurance Agency’s Code of Practice for Students with Disabilities (1999) – whose current re-drafting is informed by the present research – was based on the assumption that ensuring access to the curriculum and pedagogy for disabled students was an essential aspect of quality assurance. The Code specified over 20 precepts with which all institutions were expected to comply, but was not intended to challenge academic freedom or to be ‘prescriptive or exhaustive’ and institutions might ‘adapt it to their own needs, traditions, cultures and decision-making processes’ (QAA, 1999: 4).

Subsequently, other equalities legislation was passed, opening up university processes to closer scrutiny. Universities are required to return information to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) on the number of disabled students in specific categories and, for the purposes of establishing the level of premium funding paid to an institution, the number of DSA recipients. Part 4 DDA requires institutions to avoid discriminatory practices, and the Disability Equality Duty, which came into effect in December 2006 (and hence towards the end of this project) requires institutions to publish disability equality schemes which chart progress over time and encourages them to develop positive attitudes towards disabled people and disability issues.

Part 4 DDA is particularly radical as government has traditionally been reticent to intervene in teaching, learning and assessment practices in higher education, this being seen as a key aspect of institutional autonomy (Fender, 1996; Riddell, 1998). The onus is placed on the responsible body to know which students are disabled, while respecting confidentiality. Subsequently, universities have to define what ‘reasonable adjustments’ must be made to teaching, learning and assessment policies and practices and what counts as ‘less favourable treatment’.

However, universities are not obliged to take steps which would compromise academic standards or be detrimental to the safety or well-being of other students or staff members. Serious questions arise about which students are entitled to reasonable adjustments and where boundaries are to be drawn in defining what constitutes a reasonable adjustment or less favourable treatment in particular areas. This may be especially difficult when defining the essential learning outcomes of particular courses and how knowledge and skills may be demonstrated through non-traditional forms of assessment (see chapter 4). It can be especially difficult in certain subject areas where professional bodies are involved in accreditation. There is evidence that disabled students are particularly under-represented in vocational areas such as education, medicine and professions allied to medicine (see chapter 7 which looks at students in our study who were involved in initial teacher training). On the other hand, some subjects which are less reliant on traditional transmission pedagogy may attract a relatively high proportion of disabled students (see Neumann et al., 2002).

Our research project investigated institutional responses to the legislation, as well as highlighting areas where further guidance was required. Traditionally, students have tended not to challenge curriculum, pedagogy and assessment methods in higher education. However, the implementation of Part 4 DDA provides new opportunities for them to demand more flexible forms of teaching, learning and assessment and this research investigated the extent to which students are willing and able to adopt the role of critical consumers of curriculum and pedagogy. Our findings on this form the basis of chapter...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Series editor’s preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I: What is the issue with disabled students’ learning?
• Part II: What our research study tells us
• Part III: What are the implications of our study of disabled students’ experiences?
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index