A New Approach to Improving Education and Training Services for Tertiary Students with Disabilities - Chapter 1: Introduction

This project report consists of four main sections.

• An Introduction including purpose, background and rationale, and structure.
• A review of the significant literature available on the issue of disability and education programme design and particularly the experience of students with disabilities.
• A report on a survey of teaching and disability staff’s views on FTL and disability.
• An outline of some practical resources for disability and teaching staff in the area of FTL that have eventuated from the project.

Disability services in tertiary institutions in Australia are currently experiencing a rapid increase in demand for services and individual support provision. The increasing demands to provide a wider range and a better quality of services to more students with disabilities and medical conditions is placing greater pressure and expectations on these services and institutions. Many institutions are trying to meet these increased demands with little or no increase in disability resources or dedicated service funding. Within this context, the project sought to take an alternative approach to the question of disability service provision for the education and learning needs of these students in tertiary institutions. The project took an integrated approach which included the learning experiences of students with disabilities and the views and attitudes of teaching and disability staff towards the delivery of more flexible and accessible methods. The general approach to the topic was based on a philosophical stance that recognised the potential benefits of FTL methods, and particularly the approach known as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), for students with disabilities. These issues are discussed in Section 1 of the report which deals with the historical context, purpose and scope, background, and rationale for the project.

Chapter 2 of the report presents a review of the literature which focuses specifically on teaching and learning issues within a disability context. Particular attention is paid to students’ experiences of flexible delivery and disability issues. The findings are reported in a summary of the literature review. Little attention has previously been paid to the attitudes and opinions of teaching staff regarding accessible course design, or to how the method of programme delivery impacts on the learning experiences of students with disabilities. This information was gained through a state-wide survey of teaching staff from both universities and TAFE colleges and this phase of the project is reported on in Chapter 3. The results of the literature review and the survey were analysed and informed the development of the project’s on-line resources and strategies for utilising FTL methods to address disability needs at a more systemic level than has generally been the case. The outcomes of this resource development phase are included in Chapter 4 of the report.

Over the past two decades there has been an ongoing development in the provision of dedicated disability services within tertiary education institutions in Australia. Initially, the focus of resources and of policy development was generally on the most obvious and blatant disadvantages facing students. This typically involved issues concerned with access barriers within the physical environment of the institutions, and the disadvantages that high-needs students faced in gaining entry and participating fully in their courses and learning environments. These areas will continue to demand the allocation of time and resources from disability services.

In more recent times another point of focus has developed that relates to the actual delivery of education and training services within the tertiary sector. It has been widely recognized for many years that students with disabilities and chronic medical conditions have particular needs to cope with the demands of their academic courses. However, it has not been so clearly acknowledged in the past that these needs are more often related to the programme delivery methods than to the disability itself. It is still the case that the majority of tertiary programmes are delivered in a conventional format of lectures and tutorials with very little flexibility regarding the time or manner in which classes and course materials can be accessed. The difficulties that students with disabilities face, and the amount of support required, are often dependent on these inflexible delivery styles and have little to do with the actual type or severity of disability. It is with this issue of FTL and how it might be encouraged among teaching staff that this project is concerned.

During the relatively recent period of development in disability service provision in tertiary institutions there has also been an important movement concerned with the inclusion of equity, diversity and disability issues within the context of a quality approach to education. There is an important, yet frequently overlooked, nexus between the pursuit of quality in teaching and learning and institutional approaches to the provision of disability supports. Quality in education and training is now commonly being associated with aspects of course delivery such as the level of flexibility, the use and application of electronic media, and opportunities for asynchronous and independent learning. Such innovative and quality-driven approaches to teaching and learning have an immense potential to impact positively on the learning experiences of students with disabilities. The current project aims to contribute in a practical way to this bridging of quality, innovation and flexibility in programme delivery within the context of diverse student needs and learning styles. It is hoped that this more systemic way of considering the provision of disability services in education institutions will give a new perspective on a number of crucial difficulties currently facing funding bodies, service providers and tertiary students with disabilities.

The purpose of the project was to investigate the relationships between the method and flexibility of course delivery and the provision of disability supports. From a review of student experiences of FTL and the analysis of teaching and disability staff views on these issues it was hoped that the project could develop some practical resources and strategies for disability services staff and teaching staff in the area of FTL practices and inclusive course design. Previous studies have indicated that, from the point of view of both general student populations and students with disabilities, there are many advantages for students in the application of more FTL approaches to the provision of education services. The findings from the studies of tertiary students with disabilities will be considered in detail in the review of literature. The data gathering phase of this current project focused on the experiences of teaching and disability staff and on how they approached the question of servicing disability needs within a programme delivery context.

The outcomes of the project reflect this focus on the resource needs of teaching and disability staff. It was also intended that the project might complement the existing approaches of disability services that have concentrated on the meeting of individual support requirements. For example, recently a Commonwealth funded programme has been implemented to support high-needs students with disabilities. It is hoped that the systemic strategies and education resources developed through this project will complement individually focused programmes.

The usual approach to addressing disadvantages in the learning setting has been to provide individual supports to students with disabilities to enable them to gain access to the information and learning opportunities provided through their teachers and course structures. This ‘support model’ approach has been the dominant model in use in both the university and TAFE sectors. Although it will always have an important contribution to make, the support approach to service provision has several major flaws. For example, the support model:

• does not allow full participation at the point at which the learning experience is offered to other students;
• is usually reactive to students’ needs and consequently is implemented too late or after key aspects of a programme have already been delivered;
• is fundamentally at odds with the proactive intent of state and federal legislation covering disability access and service provision;
• assumes that the problem is located “within” the student and subsequently does not look at the basic accessibility of the service being delivered;
• does not fundamentally address the need for a change in current course delivery and teaching practices and can lead to a static perspective on issues of flexibility or accessibility;
• relies on methods of support such as note-taking, transcription services and assistive technology supports which are often expensive, complex to administer, reliant on high levels of technical knowledge, difficult to maintain over long periods, inadequate for replicating information and sometimes not encouraging of the full participation for the student with a disability;
• requires that supports must be re-established for every student in each course that they attempt;
• is based on the assumption that disclosure will always take place and that it will be done at the appropriate time and to the right individuals;
• does not address the needs of those who do not disclose or those who encounter problems directly at the point of delivery of the course.

These are all very substantial problems and together they produce disability services where staff are caught up in a cycle of service provision that is time consuming, highly administrative and which does little to produce long-term change in the equitable provision of education services. In contrast to the reactive approach of the support model, the current proposal comes from an inclusive and proactive perspective. The project focuses on the learning environment itself and investigates how teaching staff view the whole issue of FTL and disability. This approach has great potential to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of disability services in higher education and to do so from a perspective that meets the legislative obligations for service provision to be accessible and flexible at the point of delivery.

It needs to be stressed that it is not the purpose of the project to focus on specific course adaptations or teaching strategies for particular disabilities. In the past, the support approach has encouraged teaching staff to offer “reasonable accommodations” to students with disabilities through adopting certain inclusive teaching practices and alterations to courses. There are three key problems with this approach that reduce its utility and effectiveness. First and foremost, it relies on the frequent and ongoing disclosure of support needs and type of disability by students. Second, the approach is only targeted at specific disabilities and places huge demands on teaching staff when a number of different types of disabilities are present in a single class. Finally, it presents a very exclusionist approach to disability supports to teaching staff and encourages a deficit model of disability. Whatever course changes or inclusive teaching practices that are instigated through this reasonable accommodations approach, they are highly unlikely to be continued as they are seen to be relevant only to one or two “students with disabilities”.

This project also does not approach the issue of programme flexibility from a distance education perspective but focuses on the mainstream experience of on-campus learning environments. Much work has already been done in the distance education field and it is not the intention of this project to replicate or review the work done in these areas. This project was to investigate how standard campus-based courses, which are available to the general student population, might be moved towards more inclusive methods of design and delivery. Students with disabilities already experience many isolating circumstances and exclusionary practices, and the distance education model should not be seen as a solution to these disadvantages. While there are many service elements that are shared by the distance education and flexible delivery models, particularly in the technology area, they are approaches that currently address very different learning needs of students. This is not to say that distance education and flexible delivery models will not in the future form very innovative alliances in the delivery of education programmes. In fact, this is one very likely outcome of the current development of new student learning environments. For the moment however, the authors do not see the distance education approaches as an appropriate model for meeting the disability needs of students enrolled in conventional campus-based courses.

Based on the information and results drawn from the review and the survey phases of the project, several identified outcomes were achieved and practical resources developed. These include:

• the development of a comprehensive on-line resource for teaching and disability staff focussing on disability and FTL and Universal Design for Learning (UDL);
• the development of best practice information with checklists and hints to assist course designers and teachers in the structuring of their programme delivery methods;
• a staff development model to support the implementation of alternative modes and practices that increase flexibility in the learning environment;
• the wide dissemination of the project findings and resources to progress the effective and efficient improvement of disability services in learning and academic support.

These outcomes will have an important national significance in that they will stimulate and support the move to a more equitable and efficient delivery of education and training services to tertiary students with disabilities. The numbers of tertiary students with disabilities is increasing rapidly and disability services need to find more innovative and proactive ways of providing support to these students. The existing disability services within universities and TAFE colleges cannot continue to provide the same level of services to students without the implementation of a more efficient approach that also addresses the need for quality in service provision and the meeting of individual needs. The community is also recognising that such services should generally be made available without the need for disclosure or notification of disability. The solution to these issues will not be found in traditional “support” models of disability services that target the micro-level of meeting disability needs, nor will it be found in the expectation that students adopt assistive technologies to overcome disadvantages in the classroom.

Instead of relying on students accommodating their learning styles and support needs to inflexible teaching practices, it is hoped that the results and resources developed through this project will assist teaching staff and disability officers to target service development in this are through more flexible and accessible academic and education programmes. This approach will have wide application in areas such as staff development, teaching and learning strategies, policy and planning considerations, information technology and course design. It is hoped that the results and resource outcomes of this project will contribute to the development of a more equitable and quality-focused approach to the inclusion of students with disability in education, training and learning environments.