Tayler Nichols, Ed.D., CRC, San Diego City College, DSPS Professor/Counselor
Faculty members play a crucial role in the development and success of the student experience. But students with disabilities may not typically be taught by college faculty who are representative of them. Faculty with disabilities are underrepresented and/or underreported in higher education (Grigely, 2017). In the 2015-2016 academic year, 20% of undergraduate students reported having a disability (U.S. Department of Education, 2018). However, there are only 4% of faculty throughout the nation who reported having a disability (Grigely, 2017). There is also limited literature about the disabled faculty experience.
For those faculty who teach, the act of teaching is an incredibly complex task. Faculty members need to consistently monitor the setting of the classroom, instructional goals, students’ participation and learning, as well as the delivery of critical topics in a lesson (Richards, 2008). These components are a lot to balance and monitor at once. How one chooses to deliver their content, the topics to deliver, and how to support students in the classroom can be influenced by a number of factors.
Faculty members may use their own identities to influence their teaching strategies. Teaching, learning, and curriculum can be a venue in which people’s identities are invented and re-invented (Oakes & Lipton, 2007). A second factor that can affect how a faculty member teaches their curriculum is the faculty member’s beliefs and values. A faculty member’s beliefs affect how they express their ideas, thoughts, and knowledge, as well as their preferred way to do so (Basturkmen et al., 2004). The desire to understand and reach all learners can be another factor in how instructors deliver concepts and material to students. Instructors may closely examine the classroom engagement and performance of students to determine which delivery methods may work best (Mondal & Majumder, 2020). Finally, the implementation of strategies taken from professional development opportunities can influence how instructors choose to deliver content.
The disability identity and experience of a disabled faculty member can be an influencing factor in how and what content is delivered to students. One’s disability identity development can occur over a series of phases. Forber-Pratt & Zape (2017) theorized disability identity development occurs over four statuses: Acceptance, Adoption, Relationships, and Engagement. These statuses, instead of stages, are meant to provide more fluidity for individuals as they develop, explore, and process their own disability identity. Each status has its own unique set of characteristics. The Acceptance status is when a person and their close friends and family are accepting of their disability (Forber-Pratt & Zape, 2017). The Relationship status occurs when a person with a disability meets someone and converses with someone who has a similar disability experience (Forber-Pratt & Zape, 2017). They begin to build their network by meeting others with disabilities and being able to relate about similar experiences. Within the Adoption status, people test out the shared values of disability and decide for themselves how much they want to embrace and incorporate these values into their own identity (Forber-Pratt & Zape, 2017). If a person is considered to have an Engagement status, they are assuming leadership roles and giving back to the disability community, as well as helping others who are in the less developed disability identity statuses (Forber-Pratt & Zape, 2017). One’s disability identity is embraced in this status.
Recruitment and Participant Information:
To have a better understanding of the disabled faculty member experience, a qualitative, phenomenological study was conducted. Recruitment for participants occurred nationally and through a variety of means: by CAPED and AHEAD listservs, individual word-of-mouth, and by social media. Fourteen participants were interviewed on Zoom to discuss the influence of their disability experience in their approach to teaching and strategies utilized, their facilitation of belonging and mattering for students with disabilities, and use of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. Participants taught at either a community college, a four-year institution, or both. The disabled faculty that participated in this study taught a variety of subjects: English, Communications, Engineering, Physics, Animal Science, Vocational Nursing, College and Career Readiness, as well as others. Participants shared the disability type that they identified as having, some participants identified with having multiple disabilities. The most frequent disability disclosed was Mental Health, followed by Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing. Other disabilities that participants identified as having are Mobility Impairments, Acquired Brain Injuries, Learning Disabilities, and Autoimmune Disorders.
Discussion:
In this study, when participants shared their disability experiences with the entire class, it was primarily because their disability symptoms had a direct impact on their teaching environment and/or class functioning. Participants were more open to sharing their disability experience if their disability was noticeable, whether through speech or by sight. Participants who seemed to be in the Engagement status, as described by Forber-Pratt and Zape (2017), were speaking about their disability experience freely — to their institution and to students. There were a few participants that did not draw upon or share their disability experience because they may not have felt their disability experience is a driving force in how they approach teaching their courses. They may also feel other identities, such as cultural identities and their identities as academics, may play a more important role than their disability identity. Additionally, participants that seemed to have a strong sense of their own disability identity and experience were heavily involved in advocating for accommodations (for students and colleagues) and accessible policies and practices at their respective institutions.
When discussing supporting students with disabilities, a majority of the participants utilized their disability experience. They felt because they had experienced their own academic and personal challenges as a result of their disability, it made it easier to identify students who needed accommodations, but not currently connected with the campus department that authorized academic accommodations. They also described being flexible in how they measured student learning and their delivery of content. Similar to Bergstrom’s et al. (2003) findings, minoritized faculty can have an easier time in identifying and discerning the needs of minoritized students. Because of the shared disability experience, faculty members with disabilities could help in identifying challenges early in students with disabilities to then find solutions to help them persist.
References:
Basturkmen, H., Loewen, S., & Ellis, R. (2004). Teachers’ stated beliefs about incidental focus on form and their classroom practices. Applied Linguistics, 25(2), 243-272.
Bergstrom, A., Cleary, L., & Peacock, T. (2003). The seventh generation: Native youth speak about finding the good path. Charleston, WV: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools.
Forber-Pratt, A., & Zape, M. (2017). Disability identity development model: Voices from the ADA-generation. Disability and Health Journal, 10(2), 350-355.
Grigely, J. (2017). The Neglected Demographic: Faculty Members With Disabilities. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Mondal, G.C. & Majumder, P. (2020). Factors that determine the choice of instructional strategies in teaching at secondary schools. Journal of Critical Reviews 7(16), 3427-3432
Oakes, J. and M. Lipton (2007), Teaching to Change the World, New York: McGraw-Hill
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). Digest of Education Statistics, 2018 (2020-009), Chapter 3.
*Note: This is a brief summary of the dissertation “There’s No [One] Face to Disability: An Examination of Faculty with Disabilities, Their Approach to Teaching, and Support of Students with Disabilities in Higher Education”.
For a full copy, please contact Tayler Nichols at tfnichol@sdccd.edu