Perceptions of university students with disabilities in Spain: ideas and beliefs about attitudes towards their inclusion

Abstract

Despite big advances, in recent years, students with disabilities have not been greatly present in the university world, and those who do enter higher education are confronted with architectural and psychosocial barriers. Among the latter category, it is necessary to highlight the attitudes of their classmates and teachers towards students with disabilities; but we also need to take their own ideas and beliefs into account. This study therefore examines the ideas and beliefs of university students in Spain with disabilities about attitudes towards disabilities. Taking their responses into consideration, it can be concluded that the students in question consider neither their disability nor the university to be an obstacle to them accessing and finishing their studies. Furthermore, they perceive the attitudes of their teachers and peers to be positive, thus feeling themselves to be fairly well integrated into the university community. However, they also call for better training on disability.

Points of interest

• This article examines the ideas and beliefs held by university students with disabilities in Spain on the attitudes of their teachers and classmates towards their inclusion.

• This article looks in detail at the real-life interactions between students with disabilities and people without disabilities.

• The students with disabilities, although considering their peers and teachers to have positive attitudes towards them and feeling themselves to be included, called for the educational community to be better informed about their disabilities. For them, it is essential to have a welcome plan and a central unit coordinating and advising the entire educational community on this issue.

• This type of research is important, because it can help to give students with disabilities a voice.

Keywords:

• Attitudes
• disability
• higher education
• inclusive education
• students
• teachers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by the Programa de Intervencion Social hacia Estudiantes con Discapacidad (PISED) of the University of Granada and the author is grateful for its collaboration and that of all the people who took part in this research.