Disability and Equity in Education Commons^™

The Efficacy Of A Key Word Signing Workshop, Krista Mcmorran-Maus

Education (PhD) Dissertations

This study examined the effect of a 1-day, 6-hour key word signing (KWS) workshop on in-service special education teachers’ and speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) (a) skill identifying American Sign Language (ASL) signs; (b) skill producing ASL signs; (c) use of KWS in the classroom or therapy room; and (d) perceived changes from taking part in a KWS workshop. Participants included five special education teachers, three SLPs, and four students with complex communication needs (aged 3 to 14 years) participated in the study. All eight adult participants participated in a pretest-posttest design with repeated posttest measures over time, survey design, and phenomenological ...

Cutting As A Literacy Practice: Exploring The Fractured Body, Desire And Rage Through Queer And Trans*+ Youth Embodiments, Bess Van Asselt

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

By attending to the ways in which cutting manifests in the life histories of three queer and trans*+ youth of color, I argue that cutting is a literacy practice. I focus on the life histories of three youth, Jay, Harper and Sam, who have different experiences, reasons for, and reactions to their cutting. With each story, we learn something new about the act and how it pushes us to the brink of literacy pedagogy. Jay’s narrative forces us to reckon with youth who refuse to or cannot maintain their bodily integrity. Harper’s story brings to the fore the ...

The ‘Ezel Project’ Inquiry: Mesotransformative Praxis To Decenter Whiteness In Racialized Organizations And Schools, Justin Gerald

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, a Black scholar in the midst of understanding his neurodivergence and his identity as someone who has been dis/abled reacts to the prodding of white peers by creating a course on decentering whiteness. The scholar then interviews ten of the participants in said class to understand how they came to select such a course and what they might have accomplished in attempting to challenge the structure of whiteness in their institutions. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, Dis/Crit, and in particular the work of Victor Ray, this work seeks to examine the narratives ...

Telemedicine And Healthcare Implications For Central Virginia: A Systematic Review Of The Literature, Patricia A. Lynch, Charletta H. Barringer-Brown, Daniel N. Brown, Taneisha D. Brown

Journal of Research Initiatives

Background: Uncertainties and challenges associated with COVID-19 have affected the efficient delivery of health care in Central Virginia. Integrating and redesigning health systems could boost the quality and efficiency of care delivery. Telemedicine has been suggested as a viable solution to increase virtual access to patient advocacy healthcare education and training programs and has the potential to help facilitate the delivery of health services to rural and remote areas. It is projected that access to quality telehealth services can minimize the need for in-person hospital visitation amid the pandemic. The innovation also facilitates remote assessment of patients and monitoring of ...

Trauma-Informed Practices For Test-Taking Anxiety At The Elementary Grade Level, Kate Campbell, Shalini Mathew

Journal of Research Initiatives

Test -Taking Anxiety (TTA) is a challenging experience for children of all ages. Childhood exposure to trauma and adverse experience has been increasing. Fortunately, trauma-informed practices, such as mindfulness activities have become more widespread in schools throughout the last few years. Existing school counseling literature offers limited perspectives on how school counselors can support elementary students for TTA. This conceptual article explores the effects of trauma-informed practices on elementary-age students' test anxiety and overall academic success in schools and offers implications for practice.

Community Integration Through Cooperative Education (Cice): A Post-Secondary World Fit For All, Stephanie Kathleen De Franceschi

The Organizational Improvement Plan at Western University

Students with developmental disabilities are a growing and diverse population. Higher education landscapes are becoming increasingly complex. Despite academic and personal supports available to all Ontario college students through student services centers, Marshall College (a pseudonym) is experiencing a disconnect between the stated vision, mission, and values and the Community Integration Through Cooperative Education (CICE) program and its students. Diverse views have polarized senior administration, faculty, and staff on how to adapt to having students with developmental disabilities accessing post-secondary education through the CICE program. This Organizational Improvement Plan explores the organizational context of Marshall College and proposes an improvement ...

Vivencias De Participación Y Exclusión Socio-Laboral En Jóvenes Con Discapacidad Intelectual, Nicolasa María Durán Palacio, Felipe Puerta Jaramillo, Magda Victoria Díaz Alzate

The Qualitative Report

Este artículo es el resultado de una investigación cualitativa cuyo objetivo fue la comprensión de las vivencias de participación y exclusión socio-laboral en jóvenes con discapacidad intelectual, mediante un acercamiento a sus narrativas. Se orientó a través de un diseño narrativo, para identificar los relatos de los participantes, las vivencias desde el punto de vista de sus protagonistas. Se realizaron entrevistas narrativas, que incluían, además de la conversación, otros textos como el dibujo y las historias. Para identificar las continuidades y discontinuidades en el análisis narrativo, se utilizó la triangulación de actores, aportando el nivel de validez requerido en los ...

A Survey Of School Psychologists To Promote Support For Developing Self-Advocacy Skills In Students With Disabilities, Kiarra Steer

Educational Specialist, 2020-current

Self-advocacy is a critical skill for effective communication and for individual assertion of interests, needs, and rights (Hengen & Weaver, 2018). It is especially important for people with disabilities to be able to self-advocate, which includes understanding their own abilities and rights and being able to voice when they need assistance or when their rights are being violated (Hengen & Weaver, 2018).

Even though self-advocacy has been determined to be a necessary skill for students with disabilities to develop, research indicates that self-advocacy instruction is often not provided to students with disabilities. Furthermore, while researchers have shown that teaching students to participate in their IEP meetings helps to prepare them to be successful self-advocates after high school (Barnard-Brak and Lechtenberger, 2009), there is often inconsistent inclusion of students in their educational planning meetings. Thus, there is a need to identify supports for developing self-advocacy skills in students with disabilities.

This research project reviewed the literature to inform the development of a mixed-methods survey to examine school psychologists’ perceptions and experiences in supporting students with disabilities’ self-advocacy skills. The results indicate school psychologists recognize self-advocacy skill development as a critical tool for students with disabilities’ success; however, several barriers exist which prevent school psychologists from directly supporting students in this area.

Challenges Of Transitioning Back To School From Hospitalization: The Role Of Child Life Specialists In Schools, Kelsey Bannen

Honors Program Theses and Projects

When students return to school after hospitalization, many aspects of their development are impacted. During the transition back to school after hospitalization students often face social, emotional, and academic challenges. Child life specialists typically work in hospital settings to support the social-emotional well-being of pediatric patients. Child life specialists are highly equipped to support students returning to school after hospitalization and would be a valuable asset to all school systems. Research for this study was conducted through literature reviews, an interview with a child life specialist who is currently working within a school, and surveys of school nurses and child ...

Supporting Children With Selective Mutism In Early Childhood Education Classrooms, Ashley Resendes

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Knowledge is key to understanding, and selective mutism is an anxiety disorder that a lot of people are not very knowledgeable about. It is mistaken and misdiagnosed for shyness or defiance when that is not the case at all. The purpose of this research was to clear up any of those misconceptions and explain that selective mutism is not just shyness or a child being defiant, but an actual anxiety disorder that children have that prevents them from speaking.

University Students With Disabilities, Accessibility, And The "Return To Normal", Kate M. Mahoney, Samuel A. Schneider, Anika Sebudde

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

In the context of the "return to normal" on university campuses in the ongoing pandemic, our research team wondered what students with disabilities could tell us about what makes university classes and services more and less accessible to them, and in that broader context, what pandemic modifications they hope continue. After two years of innovation, if we rush back to normal, we are at risk of squandering hard-won new skills, technology, and insights that are of broad value for all students. Disabled students' experiences and perspectives, as reported in 80 survey responses and 16 interviews, disrupt common assumptions about accessibility ...

A Qualitative Look Into Repair Practices, Jumana Labib

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This research poster is based on a working research paper which moves beyond the traditional scope of repair and examines the Right to Repair movement from a smaller, more personal lens by detailing the 6 categorical impediments as dubbed by Dr. Alissa Centivany (design, law, economic/business strategy, material asymmetry, informational asymmetry, and social impediments) have continuously inhibited repair and affected repair practices, which has consequently had larger implications (environmental, economic, social, etc.) on ourselves, our objects, and our world. The poster builds upon my research from last year (see "The Right to Repair: (Re)building a better future"), this ...

Methodology For Research On Perceptions Of Inclusion In A Children's Museum, Sophia Robinson

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Inclusion in informal education settings, such as museums, is an increasingly important consideration for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Currently, there is minimal research on methods and techniques available for enhancing the accessibility of learning in these informal settings for individuals with varying abilities. This resource outlines the methodology developed for exploring the current status quo of inclusion in a Children's Museum in London, ON, through a mixed method approach, using interviews and concept mapping to understand what the perceptions of inclusion are in parents of children with and without IDD and museum staff.

Building Intrapersonal Competencies In The First-Year Experience: Utilizing Random Forest, Cluster Analysis, And Linear Regression To Identify Students’ Strengths And Opportunities For Institutional Improvement, Marilee Bresciani Ludvik, Shiming Zhang, Sandra Kahn, Nina Potter, Lisa Richardson-Gates, Stephen Schellenberg, Robyn Saiki, Nasima Subedi, Rebecca Harmata, Rey Monzon, Randy Timm, Jeanne Stronach, Anna Jost

Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation

Leveraging research that illustrates the importance of intrapersonal competency cultivation and its correlation with institutional performance indicators of student success such as end-of-term cumulative GPA, persistence, and academic probation, our team set out to conduct an analysis on the effectiveness of a 1-unit credit/no-credit first-semester, first-year student seminar course. The course was designed to cultivate specific intrapersonal competency gains using a pre- and post-assessment design. Using a supervised Random Forest method and cluster analysis, the team expected to find unique differences in intrapersonal competency pre-, matched pre- and post-, and post-assessment inventory scores in a way where course design ...

Implementing Tactile Learning To Aid Students Understanding Of The Bohr Model, Christin B. Monroe, Andrew B. Stein, Cindy Tolman

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

It is essential for introductory level chemistry students to understand atomic models and how atoms interact to form chemical bonds. The tactile model in this article utilizes marbles to represent subatomic particles, a cup to represent the nucleus and wooden rings to simulate the electron orbitals. These inexpensive items can be combined to construct models in which students can build foundational knowledge of atomic structure and how subatomic particles interact. Students were asked to provide feedback comparing the use of this tactile model to atomic computer simulations, videos and their textbook regarding the method they felt was most useful to ...

Critical Review Of Language At The Speed Of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’T, And What Can Be Done About It By Mark Seidenberg, Elizabeth Fincher

Literacy Practice and Research

This comprehensive book review on Mark Seidenberg’s Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It advances the conversation around the “reading wars” in scholar and educator stances on effective methods to teaching reading through explicit phonics-based instruction versus a whole-language approach that emphasizes the child’s discovery of meaning through experiences in a literacy-rich environment. Seidenberg’s support of science-based or “brain-based” teaching of reading is critically examined, as it relates to theoretical and practical knowledge in reading pedagogy. This review aims to provide scientific insight ...

We're Still Emerging: A Poetic Inquiry Exploring The Tensions Between Inclusive Mindsets, Teacher Identity And Disability Stigma, Kerry K. Cormier

Theses and Dissertations

This poetic inquiry sought to understand the tensions, perspectives and experiences of teachers as they work to create more inclusive mindsets and identities despite working in a system that allows for ability profiling and disability stigma in schools. This work fills a gap in the literature in that not much is known about the journeys teachers take as they come to identify as inclusive educators. The conceptual framework drew from scholarship in the fields of Disability Studies in Education, Studies in Ableism, critical pedagogy, and teacher identity. Conducted in a professional development school, I worked as the university's professor-in-residence ...

Investigating The Teaching And Assessment Experiences Of Maine Secondary Science Teachers During The Covid-19 Lockdown, Anupam Raj

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In March 2020, an unexpected event changed the educational systems throughout the world. In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic caused public places to close down, including schools. To continue education, schools in Maine went online. This study describes how Maine secondary science teachers taught and assessed their students while teaching remotely for the first time during the lockdown. It does so by investigating teachers’ perspectives about the impact on their students, how they handled the issue of equity, their new priorities and expectations, their teaching and assessment challenges, and their successful strategies during the initial phase of the lockdown ...

Training The Next Generation Of Practitioners In Early Intervention And Telepractice: Three University Models, K. Todd Houston, Lauri Nelson, Kristina Blaiser

Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to shape the provision of family-centered early intervention services for children who are Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing and their families. In programs, schools, and centers, direct in-person contact with families have been significantly curtailed as a means to limit the exposure to and spead of the virus. Emergency remote learning has lead to an increase in telepractice, also referred to as teleintervention, as the designated model of service provision. Most early interventionists, speech-language pathologists, and teachers of the Deaf were not sufficiently trained to suddenly implement emergency remote teaching or telepractice services, but service providers had no ...

Social And Self-Concepts For Students With Idd In Relation To Inclusive Programs, Maeve Carney

Honors Program Theses and Projects

From experience and understanding, neurodivergent students are given less opportunity than neurotypical students in school-sponsored activities. With inclusive programs becoming more prevalent, students of all populations can connect and interact in the same activities rather than segregated organizations. Focusing on inclusive programs like Best Buddies and Unified Sports, this thesis will be identifying how these inclusive programs affect social and self-concepts on high school aged students with an IDD and their surrounding community. Through 25 peer-reviewed articles and self-reported data from five surrounding school districts of Southeastern Massachusetts, data and results will be illustrated and analyzed. Having a strong connection ...