Enhancing Success through Effective Teaching Practices

1
Enhancing Success through Effective Teaching
Practices

• Phil Gravestock
• University of Gloucestershire
• pgravestock_at_glos.ac.uk

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The Project

• RES-139-25-0135, Enhancing the Quality and
  Outcomes of Disabled Students Learning in Higher
  Education (2004-2007)
• ESRC/TLRP-funded project
• Longitudinal study
• following 31 students
• across four institutions in England and Scotland
• for 3 or 4 years of full time study

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Project Key Findings

• Key findings that have an impact on how we work
  with and teach disabled students
• HE environment may be disabling or enabling for
  individual students
• Key role of staff
• in ensuring a positive learning experience
• in providing access to support
• Additional work associated with being a disabled
  student

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HE Environment

• Students could feel disabled or enabled
  within the HE environment, e.g. through the use
  of labels, experiences of support, choice of
  subject
• Providing information to students about the
  support available to them was key
• Several students accessed support late or not at
  all
• Common need for students to be proactive in order
  to access support

5
HE Environment

• Duncan only describes himself as a disabled
  student within university
• I do describe myself as a disabled student,
  when my mates and stuff ask, its like, how did
  you get this and how do you get the extra time
  and stuff, thats how I describe myself, but
  thats not how I describe myself out of
  university
• (Duncan, computing, dyslexia)

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HE Environment

• In response to the question so you dont
  consider yourself to be a disabled student, Ben
  responded
• No, not really, but I think thats mostly
  because of the course Im doing. Because Ive
  managed to do something to almost get around it.
  So its something thats, its there, but its
  not relevant to my work.
• (Ben, dyslexia)

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HE Environment

• Using the label of disabled student to get
  support
• It does give you access to all sorts of things
  because if you dont say Im disabled you dont
  get the support. You have to understand that you
  need the support in order to get where you want
  to be. ... So, yeah, you need the label to get
  the help definitely.
• (Daisy, visual impairment, dyslexia, dyspraxia)

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Role of Staff

• Positive staff attributes identified by students
• Helpfulness
• Availability
• Approachableness
• Being supportive
• Importance of responding to an individual
  students needs rather than blanket provision
  based solely on impairment

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Role of Staff

• Approachability of staff
• It depends on the lecturer. The likes of
  name in language, I would have no problem
  telling her anything about that because she is
  the type of lecturer who would understand fully.
  Whereas you have got the other ones and you think
  no, they actually think you are just stalling or
  looking for something for nothing. ... I
  dont want them to look at me differently in any
  way.
• (Andrew, cerebral palsy)

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Role of Staff

• Responding to individual student needs
• In the first year one of the lecturers who was
  sitting in on my exam took it upon himself to
  read the entire maths exam test out nice
  enough guy but hes read this entire A plus 2
  to the power of and I said, well I can see
  that! ... Ill ask you when I need you to read
  something. And hes no, no, Id better read it
  all out, and this is eating into my time and I
  was just enraged and I was nearly on the point of
  walking out.
• (Brendan, dyslexia)

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Additional Work

• Students often did significant extra work
  compared to their non disabled peers
• Organisational associated with nature of
  impairment or arranging support
• Emotional - managing the perceptions of staff and
  students, choices about positioning disability as
  part of their identity

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Additional Work

• Organisational
• In the first year there was a lot of things I
  needed to be put in place like my glasses with a
  prism in, the dark tint, the dyslexia training,
  the computer training for the software they give
  us. The first year was quite time-consuming
  because I had to find spaces for all this in
  between lectures, but when I conquered that and I
  did in the first year I was pretty chuffed with
  myself.
• (Barry, dyslexia and undisclosed visual
  impairment)

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Additional Work

• Emotional
• Its a disability of sorts but I dont regard
  it as a disability. I prefer to regard it as some
  horrible part of my life that I dont like very
  much. I think its the best way of explaining it.
  Something I have realised is that it can
  affect my life a lot more than I realised. It is
  difficult to keep everything in balance.
• (Kathryn, diabetes)

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Teaching and Learning

• Students expressed a preference for a mixture of
  teaching and learning activities
• There was a preference not to experience one
  single teaching format over a long period of time
• Several students identified passive lectures as a
  poor example of teaching
• Some examples of active learning, however, could
  also prove disabling
• Students from all four institutions identified
  the benefits of being provided with lecture notes
  in advance

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Teaching and Learning

• Lectures
• I dont like straight lectures. ... My
  worst is lecturers that just talk at you because
  then you cant listen to them and type and think
  about it, youre just literally trying to do what
  theyre saying. Even if theyre standing up
  theyre flicking their PowerPoint and making you
  copy it. Youre not listening, youre just
  copying.
• (Daisy, dyslexia)

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Teaching and Learning

• Activities within lectures, such as in-class
  reading
• Thats another nightmare, no way, thats awful.
  ... We had that in one of our subject
  lectures, read this and then comment on it in
  class. No, I cant do that because it takes
  ages to read things and I have to highlight
  things and then ... no, I dont like that.
• (Daisy, dyslexia)

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Teaching and Learning

• Providing lecture notes in advance
• Lecture notes help because you can take them
  to the lecture with you and then instead of
  having to write and listen at the same time ...
  you have got the main teaching points anyway and
  you listen out for them and then you make extra
  notes at the side. Its a lot easier to keep
  up.
• (Andrew, cerebral palsy)

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Teaching and Learning

• Providing lectures notes in advance a staff
  perspective
• I suppose I dont really agree with lecture
  notes in advance in the sense that it encourages
  people not to go. If they freely got the lecture
  notes available then they wont turn up.

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Teaching and Learning

• Different lecture notes to different students
• The lecture notes werent as complete as the
  set that the dyslexia people have received and
  we would need that actual material that they got,
  because ... he is kind of throwing information
  at you and you couldnt take that down.
• (Kathryn, diabetes)

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Conclusion

• Feedback from disabled students suggests that
  they welcome
• A mixture of teaching delivery methods.
• Lecture notes should be available in advance.
• Feedback also noted
• Staff attitudes are crucial to the learning
  experience.
• Assumptions should not be made about students
  abilities.

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References

• Fuller, M., Georgeson, J., Healey, M., Hurst, A.,
  Kelly, K., Riddell, S., Roberts, H. Weedon, E.
  (2009) Improving Disabled Students Learning
  (Abingdon Routledge)
• Healey, M., Fuller, M., Bradley, A. Hall, T.
  (2006) Listening to students the experience of
  disabled students of learning in one university,
  in M. Adams and S. Brown (eds) Towards Inclusive
  Learning in Higher Education developing
  curricula for disabled students (Abingdon
  Routledge).
• Acknowledgements Hazel Roberts andProfessor
  Mary Fuller