Inclusive postsecondary education and self-determination: using photovoice to centre student voices in the United States of America

Abstract

Self-determination, or the freedom to act as the primary causal agent in one’s life, is a well-documented component of enhanced quality of life. Yet young adults with disabilities are often less self-determined than their nondisabled peers. Furthermore, there is an absence of the voices of young adults with disabilities in the literature related to self-determination. While research investigating populations positioned as marginalized has historically been defined by a marked power differential, separating the researcher from the participant, this study utilizes photovoice, a participatory method, to understand how U.S. college students with intellectual disabilities understand self-determination. We seek to trouble the dominant narrative that marginalizes students with intellectual disabilities and instead positions these emerging adults as experts in their own lives. From this study we illuminate how self-determination is enhanced through equality of opportunity and how sense of belonging is related to self-determination.

Points of interest

• Because the voices of groups of people marginalized by society (such as young adults with disabilities) are often left out of the research related to their lives, it is important to use methods of research that attempt to change this fact; some of these methods can be called participatory research.

• For young adults with intellectual and developmental disability, the barriers to self-determination are many; this project’s main aim was to centre their voices and position them as active participants and experts in their own lives.

• One particular type of participatory research called photovoice is a partnership between researchers and participants, where participants take photos of specific parts of their lives and then explain them.

• Using a photovoice project we carried out within a course within an inclusive postsecondary education programme on a U.S. college campus, we aimed to better understand participants’ conceptualization of self-determination in their everyday lives.

Keywords:

• Photovoice
• participatory research
• intellectual and developmental disability
• emerging adults
• self-determination

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest are declared by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded in part by a SPARC graduate research grant through the University of South Carolina.