Students with disabilities in higher education – perceptions of support needs and received support

Abstract

Students with disabilities in higher education frequently need support to succeed in their studies. Perceived problems in managing studies and everyday life may be the same for students with different disabilities although the reasons for support may vary between them. In this pilot study, a questionnaire aimed to survey everyday functioning in students with disabilities was tested. Thirty-four students with Asperger syndrome (AS), motor disabilities or deafness/hearing impairments were asked 55 close-and open-ended questions regarding participation restrictions and available support programmes. One aim was to test the usefulness of the questionnaire. Another aim was to identify students' perceptions of their everyday student-life and the support they are offered, with a special focus on comparing perceptions of needs and support between student with AS and the other student groups. The results indicate the need to plan recruitment of participants carefully and that the questionnaire was useful. The descriptive analyses conducted, indicated that the groups primarily reported the same difficulties, but the open-ended comments indicated that the reasons for the problems vary between the groups. It indicates that likert type responses to questions concerning perceived difficulties need to be supplemented by open-ended questions concerning perceived reasons to problems.

Which students need accommodations the most, and to what extent are their needs met by regular upper secondary school? A cross-sectional study among students with special educational needs

“…Perhaps this was not surprising since students with ADHD and Asperger's have been identified by other studies, e.g. Bolic Baric et al (2016), Fleischer Simmeborn, Adolfsson, andGranlund (2013), as experiencing difficulties in school. Further, students with emotional or behavioural difficulties are over-represented among students identified with SEN by teachers Smeets and Roeleveld 2016), which along with findings from the present study suggests that they are a group of students with major challenges in school.…”

“…Hosmer & Lemenshow's goodness-of-fit was applied to test whether the model´s estimates fit the data and were acceptable when not significant. A confidence interval (CI) of 95% and odds ratios (OR) were used to interpret the results of the analysis (Field 2016). Data were analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 24.0 (IBM 2016) and the level of statistical significance was overall set at p < 0.05.…”

“…a high level of accommodation needs, by generating a predictive equation (Field 2016). Prior to running the analysis, students total amount of accommodation needs in the 16 SSI items was calculated and ratings of 1, 2 and 3 in the SSI items were regarded as indicating a perceived need of accommodation.…”

“…Although inclusive policies and legislation are in place, the elimination of barriers to participation in upper secondary school depends largely on a schools' resources and teachers' knowledge of how to support students with SEN (Pearce, Gray, and CampbellEvans 2010). For example, several studies have reported that adolescent students with neuropsychiatric disorders (Bolic Baric et al 2016;Sikirica et al 2015;Fleischer Simmeborn, Adolfsson, and Granlund 2013) and dyslexia (Gibson and Kendall 2010;Pino and Mortari 2014) experience school failures and restricted participation since their needs for support are not recognised by the educational services. A qualitative study including adolescents with ADHD and their caregivers from eight European countries showed that about 50% of the students received accommodations in school, such as extra attention from teachers, adapted homework assignments or special classes.…”

A co-designed tool to gather data from students with disability about their experiences in tertiary education: Insights from Australia

“…A pilot study of Swedish students with disability in higher education demonstrated the need to supplement Likert-type measures with open-ended questions, in that case to explore the perceived reasons for the problems identified. 60 Open-ended or qualitative questions also provide a mechanism for recording and analysing student voice.…”