Accessibility Commons^™

Teaching Writing To Middle School Students With Disabilities: A Merc Research Brief, David Naff, Jennifer Askue-Collins, Julie S. Dauksys

MERC Publications

This research brief by the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium explores peer reviewed literature about effective strategies for teaching writing to middle school students with disabilities. It answers the following questions: 1) Why is it important to teach writing? 2) What is the nature of the challenge in teaching writing to middle school students with disabilities? 3) What interventions help with teaching writing to middle school students with disabilities? and 4) What strategies are utilized in the MERC region for teaching writing to middle school students with disabilities?

Trauma-Informed Educational Practices In The Middle School Classroom During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Loralynne Yost

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

This collective case study used a mixed methods approach to examine how Trauma-Informed Educational Practices (TIEP) manifest in the middle school classroom. This study is important due to the trauma students experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Teacher participants had district training in trauma-informed practices prior to this study.

Teacher participants took an initial survey to capture their conceptualization and perceived usage of the TIEP in the classroom. Teachers then used TIEP in their classrooms for two weeks. Teachers kept a checklist of which of the TIEP they used each day and commented on the context for the use of the …

Breaking Barriers: Creating Inclusive Dance Spaces For High School Students With Cerebral Palsy, Samantha Michelle Barnewolt

Dance (MFA) Theses

Abstract This thesis explores the power of positive mindsets as it relates to creative movement development in dance for students living with Cerebral Palsy (CP) who also use motorized wheelchairs. This research dives into the development of movement mantras used to break negative mindsets and create thinking strategies that encourage movement development for varied bodies. As a result of collaborative efforts between the researcher, a student living with CP, and students living without CP, this study reveals that through the removal of mental barriers which complicate the accessibility of intentional movement in dance, students with CP may overcome obstacles that …

Physical Educators’ Socialization And Self-Efficacy Toward The Behavior Management Of Students With Disabilities, Amelia Chloe Simpson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Intro: Although studies have evaluated how physical educators learn behavior management, little effort has been made to identify the socializing experiences and sources of self-efficacy that influence how physical educators approach the behavior management of students with disabilities (SWD).

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to understand how physical educators develop self-efficacy toward the behavior management of SWD throughout the phases of occupational socialization theory.

Method: Data for the mixed-method study included 85 U.S. public (K-12) physical educators who completed a survey that collected demographic information and responses to the Teaching Students with Disabilities Efficacy Scale (Solomon & Scott, …

Roots And Webs And Nets And Branches And Bulletin Boards And Banners And Newsletters And Mutual Aid Text Threads And Kin And Caretakers And Porches And Poems Of Today And Spaces Of Survival, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo

Theses and Dissertations

As I welcome Richmond, VA into my family, I find myself needing to make roots and webs and nets and branches that ground me, that place myself as a Black, queer, mixed race, artist, activist, educator, storyteller, and cultural worker in this city. I am called to the streets before I am called to my studio. I question what it means to be a part of an institution that is slowly eating this city up. I become a story collector. I need to know where I am and whose land I now call home.

Increasing Awareness Of Inclusive Stem Education Through A College-Level Student Research Group, Sami Kahn, Tiffany Agyarko, Grace Lanouette, Sean Lee, Courteney Wiredu

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

The underrepresentation of persons with disabilities in STEM reflects not only a moral failing in society’s commitment to equity but also a practical dilemma as science benefits from the contributions of people with diverse perspectives. While teacher education programs attempt to address equity at the K-12 level, societal biases and misconceptions about who is “able” in science present persistent barriers for people with disabilities throughout the STEM pipeline, in higher education, employment, and beyond. How can we ensure that students with disabilities will encounter professors, employers, coworkers, and peers who are supportive of their efforts in STEM? To address this …

Co-Teaching Strategies: Improving Student Engagement By Increasing Opportunities To Respond, Janet E. Nutt

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

Research indicates that effective co-teaching using high leverage practices can maximize outcomes across content areas and positively affect student engagement. This paper discusses practical ways to increase student engagement by increasing opportunities to respond in a co-teaching setting. Specific examples are included for a secondary mathematics co-taught classroom, but the principles can be applied in any subject or setting. A proposed model of professional development and coaching to support effective questioning techniques and increase opportunities to respond is also discussed for the purposes of teacher training and professional development.

Engaging Students With Disabilities In Universally Designed Science Education, Latifa Sebti, Michelle L. Damiani

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

Increased student diversity in classrooms and the need for equitable STEM opportunities for all, creates an impetus for educators to establish inclusive and equitable environments and use teaching practices that facilitate meaningful learning for all students in science education. This article offers a three-part framework for combining inclusive philosophy, the science and engineering practices, and Universal Design for Learning. The article is intended to help teachers and teacher educators universally design science education to level the science learning field through access and equity for all students, including students with disabilities. We advocate for the use of four practices: creating an …

Deaf Inclusion And Accessibility In The Dance Field, Samantha M. Doyle, Caroline S. Clark

Symposium of Student Scholars

Over the past ten years, the dance field in the United States has shifted towards practicing diversity and inclusion. However, there are still underrepresented groups in dance, such as the Deaf community. There is a current lack of pedagogical content to help dance teachers and choreographers be inclusive to Deaf dancers. This research addresses the gap by discussing issues and access for Deaf and hard-of-hearing (HOH) dancers in the dance classroom and on stage. To do so, I present a literature review and analysis of current scholarship with a goal of bringing awareness to the current lack of accessibility to …

A Phenomenological Replication Study On The Unique Challenges Experienced By Veterans Diagnosed With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd) While Attending A California State University (Csu) In Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino, Or Orange County, Ralph Martinez

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological replication study was to understand the unique challenges experienced by veterans diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) while attending a California State University (CSU) in Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino, or Orange County. Furthermore, it was the intent of this study to explore the current and prospective services veteran students believe were helpful or would be helpful in promoting positive academic outcomes.

A phenomenological approach was utilized in the development of this qualitative research study to explore the lived experiences of veteran students diagnosed with PTSD attending a California State University (CSU) in Riverside, …

Supporting Students With An Autism Spectrum Disorder In Engineering: K-12 And Beyond, Jennifer L. Kouo, Alexis Hahn, Sarah Morton, Jay Gregorio

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

Individuals with disabilities, including individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. With the importance of STEM skills in future employment and other disciplines, effective instructional strategies must be identified to enhance early and sustained access to STEM for students with ASD. However, the literature identifying effective STEM-specific supports and practices for this population of students is sparse and regarding engineering, there are no empirical studies that focus on teaching engineering skills to students with ASD. Therefore, the article aims to provide an overview of the available literature on the perspectives …

University-Based Principal Preparation Programs In Texas In 2019: Where Is Special Education?, Ann Hoa Lê, Julie Peterson Combs

School Leadership Review

Most principal training programs in the United States focus very little on preparing aspiring instructional leaders to lead programs for students with disabilities. An examination of principal preparation programs and their SPED components is necessary at a time when standards have been revised and new certification exams have been constructed in Texas. To explore the presence of SPED topics in principal certification courses, we used a classical content analysis with a group of university-based principal preparation programs. Almost half of the universities in our study required 18 semester hours or fewer for principal certification, and none of these had course …

"Agents Of Change" – Lessons Learned From The Nation’S First Undergraduate Civil Rights Advocacy Clinic, Kath E. Rogers, Olu K. Orange

Experiential Learning & Teaching in Higher Education

How can universities support their students in pursuing civil rights activism? In doing so, how can universities prioritize students from marginalized communities who are most affected by justice issues? This paper will explore lessons learned from the nation’s first civil rights clinic at the undergraduate level. Responding to the urgency of our time, the University of Southern California, Dornsife College, launched "Agents of Change: Civil Rights Advocacy Initiative” in January 2021 to support students in addressing civil rights challenges in the Los Angeles community. This paper will discuss the importance of the civil rights activism clinical model at the college …

An Artificial Intelligence Tool For Accessible Science Education, Jacob D. Watters, April Hill Dr., Melissa Weinrich Dr., Cary Supalo, Feng Jiang Dr.

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

One of the most important issues in accessible science education is creating a laboratory workspace accessible to blind students or students with visual impairments (VI). Although these students are often provided access to the science lectures, they are usually denied full participation in hands-on laboratory work. Current solutions to this problem focus on providing special accommodations such as asking sighted lab partners to complete the hands-on work. Although the accessibility of laboratory devices in modern science education has been improved in recent years, students with VI often remain passive learners. In this work, we developed a new artificial intelligence tool, …

Making Scientific And Technical Materials Pervasively Accessible, Jason J.G. White

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

In this paper, the question is explored of what policies, standards and practices are desirable to ensure that hardware, software and publications in the sciences and associated disciplines are created from the outset to be accessible to people with disabilities. Insight into this question can be obtained by considering the unique accessibility challenges that these materials pose, including complexities of notation, language, and graphical representation.

Having analyzed what sets this problem apart from broader issues of accessibility, the advantages and limitations of current international standards are reviewed, and contemporary developments in standards and policies are considered from a strategic perspective. …

The Perceptions Of Teachers Of Students With Visual Impairments On Students With Visual Impairments And Graphing: How To Teach, Ashley N. Nashleanas Ph.D.

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

Many gaps exist in what is known around teaching students with visual impairments (SVI) about how to use graphs (Rosenblum et al., 2018; Rosenblum & Herzberg, 2015; Zebehazy & Wilton, 2014a;2014b;2014c). When teachers first experience a student with a visual impairment, some of the questions that come to mind are: How can I be sure this student understands what I am saying about these graphs I show on the board? Will this student be able to keep up? The study herein, based on findings from Author (2018), serves as a guide for teachers to consider in the case that SVI …

The Playground: An Online Summer Camp For Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Children, Emma Monson, Krista Schumacher, Annmarie Thomas

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

The PLAYground summer camp was developed by the Playful Learning Lab (PLL) at the University of St. Thomas, an undergraduate research group with a focus on learning through play. Through a partnership with a local school serving deaf and hard of hearing students, the PLAYground was designed to provide content to the deaf and hard of hearing community. Over the course of 8 weeks, 84 students were provided with materials that correspond with activities on the website. Each activity is accompanied with a lesson plan and video, both of which are available in English, American Sign Language, Spanish, and Arabic. …

Build Your Own Body Mod: Empowerment Through Prototyping And Design, Anaiss Arreola, Katherine R. Ganim

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

When you don’t have a hand, what could you have instead? This article introduces the impact of inviting youth with disabilities to learn tools and technology to design their own solutions and advocate for their own future. This approach to programming is rooted in a mindset of designing WITH, not FOR. Not only are design outcomes improved when users are incorporated into the process, but this approach has been shown to improve confidence in creating one’s own solutions. These programs include hands-on “design-your-own-body-mod” workshops, as well as a budding inclusive design consultancy led by youth with disabilities. Through this programming, …

Disability Injustice: A Latino’S Creative Autoethnographic Testimonio On The Organizational Culture Of Higher Education, Leonel A. Diaz Jr.

Organization, Information and Learning Sciences ETDs

Using creative autoethnographic testimonio (CAT), a story is told about the injustices within the learning environment and work environment of higher education toward a person with disabilities: sleep apnea, learning disabilities, negative mental health. The author explores the health difficulties of addressing sleep deprivation while attending graduate school and working full-time as a professional. With sleep apnea impacting his health, his mental health declines. As his health declines, there is an increase in discrimination, hostility, oppression, bullying, and toxic masculinity. Initially, the medical system dismisses his declining health and refuses to look further into it. Once he receives medical care …

Inclusion, Engagement, And Nearpod: Providing A Digital Alternative To Traditional Instruction, Kristina Buttrey

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

Unfortunately, the onset of Covid-19 and the ensuing pandemic led to a shift in the structure of classrooms across all levels of the educational spectrum. The resulting move to more social distancing methods, including a combination of face-to-face and online formats, led to a need for innovative uses of technology. In this article, Nearpod is explored as an alternative way to present information while increasing engagement and inclusivity in the classroom. Research studies and reviews are scrutinized on the use of Nearpod as tool for teachers and pre-service teachers in K-12.

Using Transcendental Phenomenology To Explore Elementary Teachers’ Experiences With Struggling Readers During The Social Restrictions Precipitated By The Covid-19 Pandemic, Wyann C. Stanton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study provides a window into the experiences of elementary teachers with their struggling readers during the largest world-wide interruption to education that has ever been seen. This study gives insight to educational leaders and educators as they assist their struggling readers in rebounding from the disruption to school caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and as they work to improve the quality of schooling for struggling readers. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there had been a growing body of educational literature in pandemic-related information, practice, and research. Yet, there was a need to bring to light the phenomenon of …

Creating An Online Concrete Masonry Course For Accessibility, Dolores Herrera

Architectural Engineering: Graduate Reports

An online undergraduate course in masonry design was created for an asynchronous delivery format and to fulfill web accessibility requirements. This report outlines the process of the course creation with Canvas as the host platform. Emphasis is placed on how content including lecture presentations, assignments, and course modules were developed with strong graphic software and communication skills. For accessibility, the content creation was guided by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA Standards. Lastly, the significance of learning masonry design in undergraduate structural engineering curriculum is discussed in addition to the structural engineering industry practices used to complete …

Lessons Learned: What The Covid-19 Global Pandemic Has Taught Us About Teaching, Technology And Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Jane Roitsch, Robert L. Moore, Annemarie Horn

Communication Disorders & Special Education Faculty Publications

Purpose. This paper examines the impact of the abrupt transition from attending school face-to-face to participating in online learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as reported by a parent of a student with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Design/methodology/approach. A phone interview was conducted with the parent of a child with ASD. The semi-structured interview focused on how the child’s family was impacted when classes shifted to virtual from face-to-face learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Findings. Four themes emerged from the interview. Three of these included adjustments to changes in 1) routines and roles, 2) …

Teacher's Guide To Using Literature To Promote Inclusion Of People With Disabilities, Bruce Menchetti

Open Educational Resources

The Teacher’s Guide to Using Literature to Promote Inclusion of People with Disabilities has been designed to assist teachers who wish to use literature to promote inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of life. The Guide consists of two parts. Part 1 is a rubric for evaluating how short stories, books, poems, TV programs, movies, digital media, and other forms of literature portray characters with disabilities. Part 2 of the Teacher’s Guide to Using Literature to Promote Inclusion of People with Disabilities is a curriculum guide with learning objectives, lesson activities, and strategies for outcome evaluation. The curriculum …

Systemic Functional Linguistics In The Community College Composition Class: A Multimodal Approach To Teaching Composition Using The Metalanguage Of Sfl, Jennifer James

Education (PhD) Dissertations

This qualitative research study sought to understand the affordances and limitations of a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) approach to teaching composition at the community college level. The study took place over the course of a semester in two developmental college composition classes using the language of SFL to teach writing through multimodal assignments. The study was developed in response to the increasing diversity in writing skills and educational goals of students in the community college composition class. The increase in diversity is a result of legislation in California that restructures developmental class offerings and affects placement in the transfer-level composition …

Access To Quality Education For The Underprivileged, Jayant Kumar '23, Ayati Lala '23, Jacqueline Zhang '23, Julius Wardlow '23

Student Leadership Exchange (SLX)

Education is something that everyone deserves; however, throughout the USA, there are extreme inequalities in the education system. In Illinois specifically, districts in affluent neighborhoods, such as districts 204 and 203, have graduation rates more than 10% above the state average, along with more opportunities like clubs, extracurriculars, sports, and easier access to tutoring. Conversely, districts such as 189 and 131, which are in less affluent areas, see graduation rates 10% below the state average, as well as fewer opportunities for their students as stated in the Illinois State Report Cards. As a result, we hereby propose a solution that …

Overview Of The Proceedings Of The 2020 Inclusion In Science, Learning A New Direction, Conference On Disability (Island), Cary Supalo, Jasodhara Bhattacharya, Daniel Steinberg

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

No abstract provided.

Making Environmental Education Accessible For All Students: Inclusion Of Students With Emotional And Behavioral Disabilities, Juliann Dupuis, Dawn Jacobs

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

One of the most difficult tasks of an educator is engaging students in rigorous learning opportunities. A greater challenge is finding ways in which environmental education can be accessible to all students, especially those with emotional and behavioral disabilities. This article and lesson provides best practices for engaging students with high incidence disabilities in environmental concepts through varied representations and expressions of content. In addition, teaching collaborative protocols to fully engage students with social skills challenges within the local environment are discussed. The instructional approaches are aligned to increasing academic discourse, building positive peer-peer relationships, and observation using multiple modalities.

Elevating The Voices For All Learners Through Shared Stories Of Science Learning, Lauren Madden, Stuart Z. Carroll, Amy K. Schuler

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

This study examines the science learning experiences across the lifespan of two groups of college students: adults with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities in a post-secondary inclusive program, and adults in a preservice secondary education teacher candidate program. Data, in the form of personal narrative science stories were collected using a paired-interview approach in which students from each group interviewed one another about their science learning across their lifespans, and recorded responses using an online form. Across the stories, several clear themes emerged. Similarities and differences were found across and within the groups and are shared in a narrative format. Trends …

Publishing Successful Practitioner (Teaching Techniques) Manuscripts For The Journal Of Science Education For Students With Disabilities, Jonte C. Taylor

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

The Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities (JSESD)d is the premier journal focusing on the intersections of science education for students with disabilities. JSESD provides valuable content and context for teachers and researchers on what works in advancing science access, practices, and knowledge for all students across settings, grades, ages, and exceptionality. One way in which JSESD supports teachers and researchers is through publication of practitioner manuscripts also referred to as Teaching Techniques. These manuscripts focus on the how-to portion of science education. That is, JSESD practitioner publications give detailed information on how-to provide science instruction or how-to …