Angela Jacklin, Carol Robinson, Lynn O

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Angela Jacklin, Carol Robinson, Lynn OMearaand
student co-researchers James Bibb, Dale Hards
and Victorya Buss-Novell

• Improving the experiences of disabled students in
  higher education. Report of a research project
  funded by the Higher Education Academy (2005-6).

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• Overview of the seminar
• The research project
• The student experience of HE
• Disability and the transition to HE

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The research project

• Contextual issues disabled students and HE
• The expansion of HE widening participation and
  increasing diversification
• The changing nature of HE
• The changing nature of the HEI
• Being a student roles and identities

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The research project

• Aims of the project
• to explore the educational and social experiences
  of disabled students within one HEI
• to identify ways in which their experiences may
  be improved
• to examine how useful the category 'disabled
  student' is as a basis for targeting support
• In addition
• to explore the processes of becoming and
  being a disabled student
• to attempt to access the perspectives of disabled
  students who do not declare disabled status

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The research project

• The research strategy
• Three strands
• Strand 1 the social and educational profiles of
  5 cohorts of students (2000-2004 entries).
• Strand 2 accessed student perspectives -
  questionnaire survey (198 students), follow-up
  interviews (51 students), some of whom were
  interviewed on several occasions.
• Strand 3 students as co-researchers and agents
  of change

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The research project

• Some methodological issues (1)
• Student profile (quantitative) data
• Started from data on individual students
• The nature of some of the categories was
  problematic
• A snapshot in time
• The questionnaire data
• Sampling
• Distribution and response
• New intake non-declaring students

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The research project

• Some methodological issues (2)
• Students as co-researchers
• The focus group
• Becoming an interviewer
• Collecting visual data photographs
• Dissemination

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2. The student experience of HE

• Social and educational profiles of known disabled
  students
• Becoming more representative?

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2. The student experience of HE

• From the student perspective
• most students chose to advise the HEI of their
  condition / impairment in order to avoid a
  problem or ensure support
• non-declaring students chose not to advise the
  HEI for a range of reasons, including concerns
  about labelling, stigmatisation and whether or
  not they would be considered to be disabled.

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2. The student experience of HE

• From the student perspective
• most experiences were positive both learning
  and social
• negative experiences related to impairment tended
  to result from the absence of, or delay in
  receiving resources / support
• once support related to their impairment was in
  place, this had a big positive impact on their
  experience of HE
• Many negative experiences described could have
  been raised by any HE student

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2. The student experience of HE

• The students voices
• Each of our presentations draws on what has been
  learnt from the project, rather than our
  individual views
• The structure of the slides is being developed to
  be helpful to tutors
• Each of us will focus on an aspect of the slides

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3. Disability and the transition to HE

• How useful is the category disabled student as
  a basis for targeting support?
• From the student perspective
• Usefulness of the category lay partly in the
  power of the label
• Disability is a relative concept barriers
  experienced by some students were not experienced
  by others
• So am I disabled? The extent to which students
  perceived themselves to be disabled varied.

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3. Disability and the transition to HE

• Responding to the educational implications of
  being a disabled student in HE
• A focus on the individual student
• A focus on the individual within the context of
  the HEI
• Structural, social and curriculum limitations

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3. Disability and the transition to HE

• Claire early days
• I was excited to come, it was a bit like oh my
  god Im actually going to go, even though I had
  about a year to prepare for that. Its a daunting
  idea as well. Its not the biggest university I
  applied to, which I liked. I didnt want to go to
  a massive university. So I was looking forward to
  living on campus and living in a house with some
  people, with different people

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3. Disability and the transition to HE

• I was nervous when I arrived. It was OK. My
  housemates were all very friendly. We all went
  out together in the evening. Everyone worked
  really well in my house. Im quite lucky in that
  all my housemates are very nice and theres 12 of
  us. I was concerned about not getting on but
  thats not been a problem at all, which was a
  slight concern, I thought oh god what if I dont
  get on with the people in my house and it was a
  big disaster. So that was OK. We all look out for
  each other now, so definitely a good thing.I
  wouldnt say I know anybody outside of my house
  that well which is a shame but I do definitely
  know these 11 people

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3. Disability and the transition to HE

• I was quite apprehensive, quite excited as
  well, this is all new, this is quite scary. Its
  OK for people finding it new and scary as well.
  Yeah. A lot of the people find freshers' week the
  best week of university I didnt personally but
  that might be because Im not usually into pub
  crawls and that sort of thing. I didnt find a
  huge amount of alternatives to itI did evening
  activities, like there was a latte evening or
  something like that, that was very
  gooddiscovered what was around really. The
  campus tour and the library tour that kind of
  thing. The department meeting about your course
  and that kind of thing.

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3. Disability and the transition to HE

• Claire the first weeks of term
• What does it mean to be a student?
• What is expected of me?
• Beginning to struggle.

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3. Disability and the transition to HE

• Claire mid-way through the first term
• I didnt think it would be this hard. Im
  finding it a lot harder than I thought it would
  be in terms of transition of how youre suppose
  to learn and how youre supposed to get on with
  everyday life and keep yourself going with all
  your studies and that kind of thing. .I didnt
  expect finding my learning difficulties being as
  difficult a problem. Its never been this big a
  problem to me before. But then again I never had
  to learn like this before.

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3. Disability and the transition to HE

• Claire
• Im actually going to go to university
• I didnt expect finding my learning difficulties
  being as difficult a problem,
• Should I be here? I dont know

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4. Some concluding thoughts

• Some tensions existed between a disabled
  identity and an academic identity
• Some disabled students were like canaries in the
  mine
• Although the categorization disabled student
  was useful administratively, concepts of a
  continuum were more helpful
• We need to listen more to the students voices
  and experiences