Supporting Disabled Students in
Higher Education
Hazel Roberts
Phil Gravestock
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Theme 1
• Is Higher Education enabling or disabling
for disabled students? Think of examples
from your own experience.
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Theme 1: Responses
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Flexible (e.g. with deadlines and exam arrangements).
Appropriate software available (for staff and students).
Culture shift.
Early 'presentation' of student at/before start of term.
Dictaphone to record lectures.
Podcasts.
Disabling
* Access issues (old building).
* Social interaction (e.g. group work) for some students (e.g.
Aspergers).
* Not all rooms are appropriate (e.g. lighting, sound, untidy rooms).
* Attitudinal barriers from some staff.
* Department doesn't know (about a student).
* Distractions - e.g. noisy projectors.
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Theme 2
• What types of staff attitudes are positive
for student learning? Think of examples
from your own experience
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Theme 2: Responses
* Assumptions that the students are able to do it. Faith in students'
abilities.
* Keeping in mind the bigger picture.
* Empathic and not patronising.
* Thinking of students as individuals.
* Being prepared to spend time with individual students.
* Not over-compensating.
* Attitudinal changes (on a personal basis). Changing mindset.
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Theme 3
• Think of examples of the extra ‘work’ that
disabled students do compared to their
peers
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Theme 3: Responses
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Carrying equipment around.
Listening to lectures again (e.g. when recorded).
Learning new software packages.
Administration for support worker (e.g. time sheets).
Establishing effective working relationship (e.g. with scribe).
Negotiation.
Balance of scribe's abilities / knowledge (e.g. subject knowledge).
Students educating their peers.
Additional responsibility - being proactive.
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
The project
• ‘Enhancing the Quality and Outcomes of
Disabled Students’ Learning in Higher
Education’
• 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
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Support: Project key findings
• 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 (organisational, emotional)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
HE: A disabling or enabling
environment?
• Students could feel ‘disabled’ or ‘enabled’ within
the Higher Education environment, e.g. through
the use of labels, experiences of support,
subject choice
• 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
• Importance of responding to individual students’
needs rather than ‘blanket’ provision based
solely on impairment
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
• Duncan only describes himself as a
disabled student within university:
• ‘I do describe myself as a disabled
student, when my mates and stuff ask, it’s
like, how did you get this and how do you
get the extra time and stuff, that’s how I
describe myself, but that’s not how I
describe myself out of university’ (Duncan,
computing, dyslexia)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Using the label of ‘disabled student’ to
get support:
• ‘It does give you access to all sorts of things
because if you don’t say ‘I’m disabled’ you don’t get
the support. You have to understand that you need
the support in order to get where you want to be.
Otherwise, if you don’t have any support then you
would find it impossible to do anything, like uni
wise, because there would be nobody to check
your work, nobody to say this is how you do it. If
you’d given up with the notes, there’d be nobody to
support the notes. So, yeah, you need the label to
get the help definitely.’ (Daisy, visual impairment,
dyslexia, dyspraxia)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
The role of information about support:
• ‘You actually have to know what you want
to ask for, so if you’re not sure, because I
suppose I don’t really know what I can get
and what I can’t get so I don’t really use
the disability office that much.’ (Cassie,
dyslexia)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
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 he’s read this entire A plus 2
to the power of…and I said, ‘well I can see that!’
and it just really pissed me off and I said ‘no, I’ll
ask you when I need you to read something’.
And he’s ‘no, no, I’d 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. […]
The thing is, it’s lack of knowledge, they just
don’t know’ (Brendan, dyslexia)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Individual student needs
• ‘I self-referred myself to [assessment centre name],
which is the local assessment thing, who will assess
what you need. But they said, you’ve got to have a
[company name] assessment… you don’t have to
agree to anything. So, I had the assessment and
they said, we think you need this chair and this desk
adaption, this, that and the other. Ok, you can think
it away because I don’t! (both laugh) However, he
then put the recommendation into [the assessment
centre], who ordered the stuff and now I’m in a big
argument because I don’t actually want this stuff,
kind of argument. And they’re like ‘but you need it!’
and I’m like ‘no, I don’t!’ … I’ve got on perfectly well
for a year without needing it’ (Dalia, wheelchair user)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Individual student needs
• I was offered a seven day extension and it
was like, hang on, wheelchair does not
affect my ability to hand things in on time!
(Dalia, wheelchair user)
Role of staff
• Positive staff attributes identified by students:
– Helpfulness
– Availability
– Approachableness
– Being supportive
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
• Andrew on telling staff about his impairment:
• ‘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 … there are certain lecturers I would
definitely tell and certain ones I wouldn’t […] I
don’t want them to look at me differently in
any way’ (Andrew, cerebral palsy)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
• Andrew had very different experiences when
contacting disability advisors in years 1 and 2:
• ‘I think obviously because you don’t always see my
impairment you are thinking ‘is there actually anything
wrong with you?’ And I think that’s maybe where the
disability advisor [in first year] and I got off on the wrong foot
because she couldn’t see and she thought I must kidding
here … I got that feeling but I never ever challenged her on
it, maybe I should have done’
• ‘I have spoken to a different person this year who has given
me all the help in the world that I needed to get what I
wanted and what I needed to help with the course. So that
negative experience last year in the first instance is very
positive this year. … That does confuse me’ (Andrew,
cerebral palsy)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
• Daisy found her support worker invaluable:
• I couldn’t do without my support worker,
let’s put it that way … support, proof
reading, drafting, I go to her. Note takers,
in some cases yes, in some cases I could
have passed the module without. But if
she didn’t read my work then there’s no
way I’d pass anything (Daisy, visual
impairment dyslexia, dyscalculia)).
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
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
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Organisational work I
• ‘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 then because I’d filled in
so much around my course when a normal
mainstream student would just have to do the
course.’ (Barry, dyslexia and undisclosed visual
impairment)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Organisational work II
• ‘You have to be double organised really
and I honestly think being a disabled
student actually makes your life harder
and taking the support makes your life
harder because you have to be more
organised the whole time. There’s no
point me doing an assignment the night
before when my support tutor needs to
see it.’ (Daisy, visual impairment, dyslexia,
dyspraxia)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Emotional work I
• ‘It’s a disability of sorts but I don’t regard it as a
disability. I prefer to regard it as some horrible
part of my life that I don’t like very much. I think
it’s the best way of explaining it … Something I
have realised is that it can affect my life a lot
more than I realised. But that is just something
that you have to deal with and deal with in the
best way possible and I think in terms of
university it can affect me but it doesn’t … it is
only sometimes if I let it affect me and you have
to think about how you let it affect you … It is
difficult to keep everything in balance.’ (Kathryn,
diabetes)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Emotional work II
• ‘Oh, god there is such a stigma. If I ever
said to someone ‘I am disabled’ they
would think ‘well you’re not in a
wheelchair, what’s going on?’ Also a
learning difficulty, I don’t like that either
cause it kind of sounds like I need a
minder or something. It is terrible and
awful. … there is such a stigma. So I don’t
describe myself as disabled’ (Anne,
dyslexia)
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Emotional work III
• ‘I’m taking a psychological burden with me, all
way through my life, since leaving school…It
was just constantly going through my mind all
the time. I know other students go through that,
but it was just constantly all negative, negative,
negative, and so it was like a little gremlin
saying, you can’t do this, you can’t do this, you
can’t… and it was just a throwback to school …
the psychological effect is, it’s so detrimental
and it still is. If I … didn’t have that burden of
that, I’d be a lot freer and maybe the work would
come a lot easier to me’ (Barry, dyslexia).
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
The PhD
• ‘The Role of Support Workers in the
Learning of Disabled Students in Higher
Education’
• Qualitative interviews with notetakers and
disabled students (who use notetakers) at
the University of Gloucestershire
• Potential to develop to comparisons with
other HEIs
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Findings to date
• Importance placed on interpersonal
relationships by notetakers and students
• Key role of staff in ensuring system works
and that notetakers can work effectively in
teaching sessions
• Notetakers and students are involved in
additional organisational ‘work’ not
accounted for in DSA system
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008
Supporting disabled students in Higher Education
2nd March 2008