Undergraduate Disabled Students as Knowledge Producers including Researchers: A Missed Topic in Academic Literature

Abstract

Research experience is beneficial for undergraduate students for many reasons. For example, it is argued in academic literature and in reports produced by various organizations that engage with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and science education that undergraduate research experience increases the graduation rate in STEM disciplines as well as the amount of students thinking about STEM careers. As such, being researchers should also be of benefit to undergraduate disabled students in all disciplines including STEM education. However, given that undergraduate disabled students encounter many problems within post-secondary education, including STEM education, undergraduate disabled students might encounter problems in becoming researchers. Policies are to be guided by knowledge and evidence. However, knowledge and evidence deficits exist in relation to the lived experience of disabled people. Undergraduate disabled students could decrease the knowledge deficit as researchers and knowledge producers. The numbers of disabled academic faculty are judged as being too low and efforts are under way to increase the number of disabled academics. Increasing the number of undergraduate disabled researchers might increase the available pool of disabled students that pursue an academic career. Given the important role research performed by undergraduate disabled students can play and given that many studies highlight problems for disabled students in post-secondary education in general, we used a scoping review approach to investigate the coverage of undergraduate disabled students as knowledge producers, including as researchers, in the academic literature. Using various search strategies, we obtained 1299 initial hits. However, only 15 had relevant content. No study investigated how undergraduate disabled students select their research topics or how they are enticed to pursue research projects outside of a course-based framework. No study looked at the linkage between being an undergraduate disabled researcher and career choices or using the obtained research skills on the undergraduate level in one's role as a community member after graduation. Our findings suggest an opportunity for many fields, ranging from disability studies to STEM education, to generate more empirical data and conceptual work on the role of undergraduate disabled students as knowledge producers including as researchers. Such studies could help to increase the numbers of undergraduate disabled students as knowledge producers, including researchers, which in turn could help to increase (a) the number of disabled academics, (b) the number of disabled students who perform research in the community after graduation, (c) the degree success of disabled students and (d) the knowledge available on the social situation of disabled people.

Gains and Losses in Virtual Mentorship: A Descriptive Case Study of Undergraduate Mentees and Graduate Mentors in STEM Research during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The impact of COVID-19 can also inform practices employed by STEM disciplines more broadly. This pandemic forced traditionally wet lab fields to adapt to virtual work spaces; the methods described here and other technologies may be helpful in reducing the barriers to entry for individuals who have been disproportionately excluded from STEM, such as those with disabilities, both during and after COVID-19 (Gregg et al, 2016;Jones, 2016;Jeannis et al, 2018;Lillywhite and Wolbring, 2019). In this way, virtual research and mentorship may demonstrate an opportunity to make STEM more accessible and inclusive, which can greatly benefit the field as well as individuals (Smith-Doerr et al, 2017;Kendricks et al, 2019;Menzel et al, 2019;Asai, 2020).…”

How is disability portrayed through Welsh universities’ Disability Service web pages?

“…A predominantly concept-driven coding frame (Schreier 2012) was developed, informed by disabled students' experiences of higher education, as reported in the literature (Abreu et al 2016;Beauchamp-Pryor 2007Cunnah 2015;Griful-Freixenet et al 2017;Hong 2015;Hutcheon and Wolbring 2012;Kendall 2016;Kirby 2009;Lillywhite and Wolbring 2019;McGregor et al 2016;Osborne 2019;Redpath et al 2013;Riddell et al 2007;Taylor et al 2017;Vickerman and Blundell 2010). A Critical Disability Studies perspective (Ellis et al 2019;Goodley 2017) on the social construction of disability (Rapley 2010) was also influential.…”

“…This approach also runs counter to the Self-Advocacy and Disability Rights Movements, which emphasise that disabled people should be central to any decisions and policies that affect them (Barnes 2012;Bryan 2013;Shakespeare 2013). It also means that institutions do not learn from disabled students' lived experiences (Lillywhite and Wolbring 2019).…”

“…They recognise that academic knowledge and evidence about the social situation of disabled students that could inform policy is missing. This lack of representation is a significant concern and could correlate with a similar lack of representation of disabled staff in higher education (Brown andLeigh 2018, 2020;Hurst 2017;Jeffress 2018;Lillywhite and Wolbring 2019). There is a wide lack of representation of disabled teachers (Lepkowska 2012;Meijer 2018;Riddell and Weedon 2014), and the Department for Education (2017) reported that only 0.5 per cent of the teaching workforce they consulted identified as disabled.…”

An Experiential Online Training Approach for Underrepresented Engineering and Technology Students

“…Disabled students encounter various challenges in educational settings, especially in STEM education. Data must be available that provides an insight into the situation of college disabled students as a great part of the workforce [31]. This study has dug into the results from disabled students in colleges and has gone some way towards filling this gap in the literature.…”