‘The person with a disability gets to define their disability’: exploring identity formation through the voices of university students

Abstract

It has been increasingly acknowledged that universities need to include and support students with disabilities in order to benefit these individuals. Yet, university students with disabilities often face significant barriers that impact their ability to succeed. Traditional higher education practices and belief systems have been identified as problematic, in how they influence students’ feelings and attitudes towards disability, and their self identity construction. Our qualitative research study was thus originally designed to understand how higher education students engaged with medical and social constructions of disability. The study findings prioritise these students’ perspectives and voices through interpretative phenomenological analysis and poetic interpretations. The findings are further nuanced in terms of how several students took up positions of identity that reflect social relational and affirmative disability conceptions. Aside from individuals with disabilities, this study has implications for university staff, medical and human services professionals, and disability researchers focused on higher education.

Points of interest

• Despite increased enrollments of students with disabilities in higher education, concerns have been raised about these students’ university achievement and completion.

• There is a gap in research when it comes to examining the views and experiences of university students with disabilities, from their own perspectives and voices.

• Research was carried out with university students with different disabilities in order to gauge the impact of the social and medical models on their perspectives.

• The research found that there was no single model that dominated their individual identities, as various life experiences resulted in complex and multifaceted understandings of disability.

• This research is important not only for the service providers who work with individuals with disabilities, but also family members, researchers, and other university staff.

Keywords:

• Disability affirmation
• higher education
• disability orientation
• identity
• social relations
• found poetry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.