Self-Advocacy Instruction to Teach High School Seniors With Mild Disabilities to Access Accommodations in College

Abstract

For students with high-incidence disabilities, the transition from secondary to postsecondary educational settings poses the additional challenge of acquiring accommodations. Self-advocacy interventions have been identified as important skills for students with disabilities in accessing accommodations. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Self-Advocacy and Conflict Resolution (SACR) instruction on the ability of four high school seniors with mild disabilities to request and negotiate academic accommodations. Results of this multiple probe across participant study indicated a functional relation between SACR instruction and students’ ability to request and negotiate academic accommodations in a role-play situation and in situ. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research are offered.

Teaching High School Students With Disabilities to Advocate for Academic Accommodations

“…Several factors may have enhanced the accommodations request process. First, findings from the current study, as well as previous studies promoting the acquisition of self-advocacy skills (i.e., Holzberg et al, 2019; Palmer & Roessler, 2000; Roessler et al, 1998; Walker & Test, 2011), support the implementation of explicit instructional practices (e.g., modeling, repeated skills practice, feedback, and role-plays) to enhance the ability of students to request accommodations. Next, the acquisition of effective communication skills is essential to the self-advocacy process (Test et al, 2005).…”

“…In a recent study, Holzberg et al (2019) examined the effects of an intervention that utilized direct instruction to teach students to advocate for accommodations. This intervention, the Self-Advocacy and Conflict Resolution (SACR; Rumrill et al, 1999) training program, was initially developed for college students.…”

Disability and Self-Advocacy Experiences in University Learning Contexts

“…This statement clearly links self-advocacy to the necessities of confronting oppositional others. It expands the commonly defined self-advocacy skillset to one that encompasses conflict resolution abilities (Holsberg et al 2019) that can be difficult to invoke in power-imbalanced situations.…”

Self-advocacy for first-year students in interior architecture design studios

“…It is a step towards securing a position amongst others through communication (Daly-Cano et al , 2015; Michael and Zidan, 2018; Ryan and Griffiths, 2015). It is also the awareness of one’s strengths and weaknesses, and the ability to use this awareness to make positive changes in academic environments (Holzberg et al , 2019; Paradiz et al , 2018; Rauf et al , 2019).…”