Abstract
Introductory physics students are better supported by instructors who intentionally choose to conceptualize disability as situated in the interaction between the individual and instructional structures and actively work to remove barriers and add supports for all students.
Highlights
Students with disabilities make up a significant portion of postsecondary students and enroll in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses at equivalent or higher rates than their peers depending on the type of institution [1,2]
We identified four superordinate themes across participants: (i) diagnosis characteristics could be challenging or beneficial, (ii) attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is understood socially and understanding their diagnosis supports student agency, (iii) course practices lead to disabling and supportive experiences, and (iv) disabling course structures have a greater effect in physics courses
Rather we report the diagnosis characteristics and how participants understand them because we identified the course structures that interacted with diagnosis characteristics to result in supportive or disabling experiences
Summary
Students with disabilities make up a significant portion of postsecondary students and enroll in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses at equivalent or higher rates than their peers depending on the type of institution [1,2]. Been designed to support students with disabilities [3] and postsecondary instructors across all disciplines lack knowledge about how to support students with disabilities [4,5,6], even though United States laws prohibit discrimination against students with disabilities and mandate equitable access to course materials [7,8]. Using a social relational perspective of disability, we posit that course structures interact with an individual’s diagnosis characteristics to result in disabling barriers for students with disabilities [9]. Disabling barriers are defined as characteristics of social structures which disable individuals with disabilities from access to and participation in social structures; in this study the disabling barriers of interest are primarily related to course design [10]. There is a significant lack of research investigating the experiences of students with
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