Postsecondary education across the USA: Experiences of adults with disabilities

By Peter W. Dowrick, John Anderson, Katharina C. Heyer, J. Acosta. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 2005

208 citations recorded by the source corpus.

While postsecondary education participation statistics are available, there is little research that gives voice to the experiences and perceptions of individuals with disabilities. In this study, focus groups were conducted in 10 disparate states to explore student identified barriers to the access and utilization of educational supports and subsequent employment. Results indicated that students with disabilities still have difficulty obtaining basic accommodations and supports. Discriminatory attitudes and assumptions about their ability also negatively impacted these individuals in postsecondary education and the workplace. Findings suggest that while progress has been made to increase their success, support services should be better coordinated. Programs to educate faculty, peers, and employers need to be implemented to decrease discriminatory attitudes and further increase these students' success in postsecondary education and subsequent employment.

Subfields: Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f4b651f2761f584e4061f8f09b322ceecf155ecc

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1. Barbara S. S. Hong
2. Christopher Murray
3. C. Wren
4. Keith Zvoch

Citations in the corpus

• Measuring university faculty attitudes toward disability: Willingness to accommodate and adopt Universal Design principles (2011, unknown): “in K-12 and postsecondary settings [23], differences in instructional climate [25, 40], and negative faculty attitudes [3, 11].”
• Faculty Attitudes and Knowledge Regarding College Students with Disabilities. (2015, background): “…et al., 2004) as well as reinforce the legal obligations that instructors have with regard to the provision of accommodations for SWD. DS staff can also play a critical role in the process of student disclosure to faculty (Dowrick et al., 2005) and successful implementation of accommodations.”
• A Campus Survey of Faculty and Student Perceptions of Persons with Disabilities. (2012, background): “Low expectations often result in low student performance and are a barrier to success (Dorwick et al., 2005).”
• Qualitative Analysis of the Barriers College Students With Disabilities Experience in Higher Education (2015, background): “…conducted about the experiences of college students with disabilities mostly through questionnaires, focus groups, and structured interviews (e.g., Dowrick et al., 2005; Duquette, 2000; Getzel, & Thoma, 2008; Greenbaum, Graham, & Scales, 1995), none has considered a more personal, yet less…”
• The Effects of Disability-Focused Training on the Attitudes and Perceptions of University Staff (2011, background): “Therefore, these disability support personnel should not be expected to carry out all of the necessary professional development activities on their own (Dowrick et al., 2005).”