Are we talking the same language? Contestable discourses between university staff accommodating students with disability

Abstract

This study challenges the claim that in a university, a discourse of containment is predominant in the relationships that exist around students with disability and their requests for accommodations. It explores the work knowledges of those involved with the implementation of the processes of granting learning accommodations: the disability services staff and the academic staff liaison officers. Innovative analytical techniques were applied to interview data that identify the lexicons used by each group indicating they had different ways of conceptualising the process, with the former focussing on the development of the documentation that would stand as surrogate for the student and the latter concerned with tricky processes of negotiation with teaching staff, and problems arising from insufficient funding. These distinct work knowledges indicate the ‘messiness’ that predominates in the process of ensuring that students with disability can study ‘on the same basis’ as others.

Points of interest

• Two groups of staff in the University are involved in administering, negotiating and implementing requests for reasonable accommodation of learning supports for students with disability.

• The findings show the distinct bodies of knowledge that are developed by the two groups.

• The disability services staff focus on documenting the student’s ‘impairment’ and the required reasonable accommodations to support their learning.

• The faculty academic liaison staff rely on documentation provided by the disability services staff together with what the student choses to disclose to negotiate learning support with the student’s tutors and lecturers

• A novel tool TerMine software was used to analyse the interview transcripts, identifying two sets of values at play through the language used.

• Reductions in funding to universities had an unanticipated impact on decisions to implement recommendations for support in learning.

Keywords:

• Disability
• university staff
• work knowledges
• students
• reasonable accommodations

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Funding

This work was supported by the Disability Project Fund of [name removed for anonymity] university.