2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Disabled students are underrepresented in engineering and other STEM fields, and one significant influence on their undergraduate education can be their experience seeking and receiving accommodations. Unfortunately, research suggests that STEM programs can be less supportive of accommodations and sometimes extremely unwelcoming to disabled students [1], [2]. Improving the system of accommodations in STEM education is an important step to improving inclusion for disabled students. However, little research within engineering education has focused on accommodations specifically. The purpose of our paper is to present a literature review on accommodations research in the broader education literature, identify gaps in what is known, and identify opportunities for future work within the STEM education space.
As part of our proposals for future research, we will also highlight considerations for researchers looking to explore disabled student participation in postsecondary spaces. We will define disability and describe our choice to use both identity- and person-first language. We will discuss our choice to prioritize research that highlights disabled student voices.
Our literature review will explore: which disabilities have been the focus of research in higher education; problematic practices that require increased disabled student self-advocacy rather than systemic changes; the reasons for students’ reluctance to use accommodations; the weaknesses of the accommodations approach; and suggestions for moving beyond accommodations.
We will conclude by identifying gaps in the research and suggested areas for future research related to accommodations in STEM education.
Bibliography:
[1] Y. P. Weatherton, R. D. Mayes, and C. Villanueva-Perez, “Barriers to persistence for engineering students with disabilities,” presented at the ASEE, Columbus, Ohio: ASEE Conferences, Jun. 2017. doi: 10.18260/1-2--27650.
[2] C. McCall, A. Shew, D. R. Simmons, M. C. Paretti, and L. D. McNair, “Exploring student disability and professional identity: navigating sociocultural expectations in U.S. undergraduate civil engineering programs,” Australas. J. Eng. Educ., vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 79–89, Jan. 2020, doi: 10.1080/22054952.2020.1720434.