Proyección de flujos

To a lesser extent literature has examined the roles of university instructors in relation to how they may encourage and promote the inclusion of disabled students in university settings. Hill (1996) notes that negative faculty attitudes and perceptions toward disability and providing accommodations may foster exclusionary higher education. According to Daquette (2000) university professors may be one of the most significant sources for

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enabling support and inclusion or creating limiting barriers affecting disabled students. Reindal (1995) examined the problems encountered by disabled students at the

University of Oslo, where students wrote comments documenting their daily experiences. In the study, disabled students noted barriers limiting their participation including: a lack of understanding and cooperation from administrators, faculty and lectures; issues of physical inaccessibility; weaknesses in the organization and delivery of services; and a lack of adaptive aids and other resources.

Goode (2007) also discussed how students experienced aids and obstacles to inclusive learning at one UK University. The study used a case study approach to examine the policy and legislative context and compliance of staff members to the UK Disability Equity Duty at the university. The research aimed to incorporate students’ voices using interviews and video data to examine institutional barriers. There were 14 women and 6 men all with various types of impairments/disabilities none of which identified with mental health issues. Goode (2007) states that interviews:

explored prior educational experiences; choosing university/courses; admissions/registration procedures; learning and teaching experiences

(availability of materials using alternative formats, contact with personal tutors, assessment methods); access to the built environment; transport issues;

timetabling arrangements; the provision and use of non-medical helpers; accommodation issues…access to and training in the use of assistive technologies; participation in social life. (p.39)

Data were analyzed using themes emerging from interview transcripts. No theoretical framework was mentioned informing data analysis. Although my study touches on

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similar topics, the use of a Foucauldian analytic lens to examine disabled students’ socio- spatial experiences distinguishes my research. Research has not examined socio-spatial alienating practices and how the ways university spaces are fluidly understood and shaped by webs of knowledge-power relations in their capacity to provide insights into the onto-epistemological grounding of disabled and mad students’ experiences in university contexts. This is where my research contributes new knowledge on how university spaces are ordered and used in ways that permit or exclude access for disabled and mad students. My study examines how university instructors understand disability, and interpret and enact disability-related accommodations and is concerned to further deepen an understanding of the ways in which university instructors’ thoughts and actions have socio-spatial impacts on disabled and mad students’ experiences in higher education.

Disabled students also encounter barriers to access due to assessment expectations and procedures for grading in relation to coursework. According to Redpath et al. (2012):

Students with disabilities face barriers to participation because they are working in an environment that was designed for non-disabled people, and any deviation from what is considered ‘normal’ – i.e. being able to walk, hear, see or, in the case of dyslexic students, generate high quality written work – is overlooked. This assumption of normality concerning assessment does, in itself, create a barrier. (p.3)

Thus, beliefs about normality and expectations in assessment may result in barriers to access and participation for students identifying as disabled in university settings. In addition, disabled students may be denied access to certain courses due to regulatory

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restrictions governing access to particular professions such as medicine and teaching (Konur, 2002). Disabled students often need to request and self-advocate to access and receive disability-related services (Sahlen & Lehmann, 2006). Furthermore, according to Higbee, Katz and Schultz (2010): “If a student chooses not to disclose a disability during the college admissions process, that student may never receive any further information about how to navigate the institution’s policies and procedures for accommodations, which can vary greatly from one institution to the next” (p. 4). Thus, issues of disclosure and institutional communication of policies, procedures and practices may create added barriers to the full inclusion of disabled students. In addition, Sahlen and Lehmann (2006) claim that post-secondary institutions may have the upper hand in defining the meaning of course integrity where determining a reasonable accommodation is indeed a process. Thus, institutions rationalize the denial of access to disabled students course content citing ideas about course/program integrity as justification for their exclusion. My research examines issues and contributes new knowledge relating to access to resources, disclosure, course content, curriculum and pedagogical practices, as well those related to accommodations for disabled and mad students.

Riddell, Wilson and Tinklin (2002) used the work of Bourdieu to examine participation, retention and success rates of disabled students at various higher education institutions, paying particular attention to the wider institutional ethos and types of student support mechanisms. In this research, the individual and institutional habitus is seen to limit feasible possibilities for certain social groups and shape how disabled students behave and respond to the world. However, this study did not examine how disabled students are constituted as disabled subjects and how students constitute

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themselves as agentic subjects in their capacity to challenge ableist norms, question normality and able-bodied privilege and constitute themselves as particular types of subjects.

4.8

Conclusion

This literature review identified existing gaps in higher educational research on disabled and mad students and demonstrates a need for more research highlighting their voices and knowledges. Incorporating their views and perspectives has the potential to inform increasingly inclusionary disability policies and practices. Although other works note barriers to access, and the incorporation of student perspectives as key to addressing such barriers, my research differs not only in research method but also in point of view by adopting examining the socio-spatial impacts of disability policies and practices. Mobile moving interviews is a method not employed in existing research which has the potential to allow for increased attention to the ways in which disabled students

experience socio-spatial impacts of policies and regimes of practices. My research positions disabled students as having unique knowledge and expertise on addressing disability-related barriers in the academy, which may counter and challenge dominant psychiatry-medico-clinical knowledges produced and circulated on disability in

university settings. The focus on socio-spatial impacts experienced by disabled students is a new and significant contribution to the field of higher educational research on disability.

Disability-related research in higher education remains an under-investigated area of inquiry. Although research has examined faculty attitudes and perceptions on disabled students, little research has examined pedagogical or professional training of professors

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to enable them to effectively respond to the needs of disabled students. Furthermore, there is little disability-research that speaks to mad students’ experiences and mental health issues in higher education. Experiential accounts of disabled students are generally researched at one particular higher educational institution and there are few cross-

comparative studies that examine the experiences of students, instructors, and disability office workers at various institutions.

Hinnells (1999) sheds light on the unequal power relationships between disabled students and higher education institutions asserting that institutional biases exists against disabled students in postsecondary education. This scholar indicates that disabled

students may be apprehensive to criticize or challenge the system that assesses and may grant them a university degree. Thus, fear of repercussions for actively

identifying/challenging institutional barriers may discourage disabled students from becoming involved in discussions targeted at addressing institutional access issues. My study provides mad and disabled students with an opportunity and platform to offer critical perspectives on institutional practices that may enable or limit their full participation and the ways power-knowledge relations impact social actors by encouraging particular thoughts and actions by constituted subjects in the academy.

Barnes (2007) asserts that DS is a platform from which the organization of the university and the nature of knowledge production may be challenged and re-envisioned. Riddell (1998) asserts:

Current conceptualizations of disability in higher education encourage both institutions and disabled people themselves to see impairment as an individual difficulty subject to individual solutions…Many barriers encountered by disabled

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students stem from the entrenchment of medicalized and individualized understandings of disability. (p.214-215)

Thus, the various ways disability is understood is shaped by the knowledges circulating and abounding within institutional settings.

A lack of knowledge regarding access issues for disabled students in higher education is a salient matter (Titchkosky, 2011; Borland & James, 1999). There is a lack of research on experiences of disabled students in higher education settings (Shelvin, Kenny, and McNeela, 2004). Thus, explorations of how disability is constructed, experienced, and understood in institutions of higher education remains an under- investigated area of research. My research importantly addresses this gap by examining disabled students socio-spatial experience in relation to academic accommodation and access policy and practice regimes in university settings.

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Chapter 6