Students with disabilities mentoring staff: supporting scalable academic development for inclusive education

ABSTRACT

Students with disabilities are the fastest-growing equity cohort in Australia, and yet they continue to face barriers to their success and completion at university. In this paper, we present a scalable model for one-to-one staff and student dialogue that positions students with disabilities as mentors to university staff. By doing so, we emphasise how students mentoring staff programs can be harnessed to support academic development for inclusive education. The program presented further provides a relationship-rich alternative to accessing and leveraging student voice compared to traditional methods, such as student experience surveys. We conclude by reiterating the importance of generating whole-of-community programs to support diverse learners, which foster genuine conversations between students and staff.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive education
• student voice
• student mentors
• academic development
• students with disabilities

Introduction

Students with disabilities are the fastest growing equity cohort represented in Australian higher education (NCSEHE, 2020), with similar rising participation rates recorded across the world from Malaysia (Yusof et al., 2020) to the United States (Carroll et al., 2020). Yet with the growing diversity of the student cohort (e.g. first in family and mature age), so too have grown the calls from scholars for the urgent need to address how universities provide equitable and inclusive education for diverse learners, including students with disabilities (Edwards, 2022; Zacharias & Brett, 2018). Shifts to online delivery due to the COVID-19 pandemic have further exacerbated concerns of equity (e.g. Meleo-Erwin et al., 2021; Scott & Aquino, 2020) and stressed the need to consider how students with disabilities can feel included, and catered for, in a range of learning environments.

Literature exploring how to support the design of inclusive education for students with disabilities has often cited academic development as an ongoing, critical barrier (Bunbury, 2020; Kim & Kutscher, 2021; Pitman, 2022). Recently, Collins et al. (2019) discussed their findings of a study exploring inclusion for students with physical disabilities in an Australian university and found that academics often reported no formal training on inclusion and insufficient information on the requirements to support students in their learning experiences. As one participant reflected,

I have never received formal training [on the needs of students with disabilities]. I really don’t understand all the requirements and I am not up to date with the technology that’s now emerging that can support or assist. (Collins et al., 2019, p. 1482)

The challenges towards supporting students with disabilities are further compounded by a myriad of perennial issues in academic development, including staff availability and incentives to participate (Hallett, 2021; Watermeyer et al., 2022), and a lack of evaluation on the benefits of equity interventions (Younger et al., 2019). Findings from research also highlight that staff are particularly hesitant or confused over how to support students’ requests for reasonable adjustments (Bunbury, 2020; Moriña & Orozco, 2021). Yet supporting students’ reasonable adjustment requests, including access to speech-to-text devices, or allowing students with anxiety to present privately to the teacher rather than a whole class, are legal obligations that all tertiary institutions in Australia must provide (Disability Discrimination Act, 1992). As outlined by the Disability Standards for Education (2005) in Australia these adjustments may be determined as ‘reasonable’ based on the student's disability and the effect of the adjustment, while still maintaining the academic integrity of the course.

In this paper, we discuss our approach to addressing how to create scalable, relationship-rich academic development opportunities for staff. We do so through a ‘Students Mentoring Staff’ program which positioned students with disabilities as mentors, or student partners, to help staff understand students’ lived experiences and reflect on their own practices (Arman, 2019; Cook-Sather, 2018; Cook-Sather & Hayward, 2021; Marquis et al., 2019). As a point of difference from other student mentoring programs, in our program we use a simplified model to maximise engagement from student mentors and staff. We do so intentionally to explore if and how a simple, informal program can provide benefit to students and staff, and importantly, how such a program could foster greater awareness about inclusion at the university. Through our findings, we discuss the need for universities to create spaces for dialogue between students and staff to openly discuss equity and inclusion, and the importance of recognising that many staff are still learning what it means to be inclusive.

Foundations of the ‘students mentoring staff’ program

In the design of our program, we acknowledged the different and disputed conceptualisations of inclusive education. As Florian (2014) summarised, to some inclusive education is about achieving environments where all student perspectives and their distinct abilities are equally valued, and to others, it is about minimising potential barriers to learning in the classroom (e.g. ensuring accessible resources, designing assessments where students can play to their strengths). In our program, we align with growing research that conceptualises inclusive education as an ongoing practice where teachers or staff learn how to respond to the individual differences of learners while simultaneously creating equitable environments where students do not feel marginalised (Black-Hawkins & Florian, 2012; Marquis et al., 2016).

The impetus to our program, well supported by the existing literature, is also that students with disabilities continue to face challenges and barriers in their higher education experiences (Grimes et al., 2017; Kilpatrick et al., 2017; Li & Carroll, 2017). In a national survey of students with disabilities in Australia (n = 1794), Pitman (2022) concluded that ‘despite increases in participation over the last decade, people with disabilities remain underrepresented in higher education and lag national averages for retention, success and completion’ (p. 1). Troubling, is that much of the research to date has found the barriers to inclusion relatively easy to address, from uploading learning resources in file formats that are accessible for screen readers (Harpur & Loudoun, 2011), to allowing for more flexible assessments or extension requests (Tai et al., 2022). While these issues no doubt only scratch the surface of the complex sociocultural work that needs to occur at universities to address discrimination and stigma (Dollinger, Ajjawi, et al., 2023; Nieminen, 2023) it was on the review of these findings that our program sought to create actionable, practical change that would impact both the current and future generations of students.

To harness the expertise of students with disabilities in their lived experiences, the program adopted a students-as-partners approach. Frequently defined as a ‘collaborative, reciprocal process through which all participants have the opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricular or pedagogical conceptualisation, decision-making, implementation, investigation, or analysis’, students as partners frames both students and staff as learners in the effort to improve the student experience (Cook-Sather et al., 2014, pp. 6–7). Underpinning students as partners are also several key fundamental principles which inspired our program’s model, as identified by Cook-Sather et al. (2014, pp. ix-x), including:

1. Students have insights into teaching and learning that can make [teachers’] and [students’] practice more engaging, effective, and rigorous,

2. Faculty can draw on additional student insights through design collaborations with students, and

3. Partnerships between students and faculty change the understandings and capacities of both – making us all better teachers and learners.

Previously, students as partners approaches have been shown to have significant success towards one-to-one academic development. Examples include Bryn Mawr College’s Students as Learners and Teachers (SaLT) program, first piloted in 2006. As described by the program’s founder, the program’s ‘explicit goal was to support generative dialogue about teaching and learning that rarely unfolds between faculty members and undergraduate students …’ (Cook-Sather, 2010, p. 558). Similar models and programs also exist at Reed College (Oleson & Hovakimyan, 2017) and Northeastern (Cook-Sather & Hayward, 2021), with reported benefits for participants including greater self-reflection and enhanced engagement, motivation, and enthusiasm (Bovill et al., 2011; Cook‐Sather & Agu, 2013).

However, many of the existing students as mentors to staff programs require extensive time commitments and resourcing. For example, the SaLT program is a semester-long program, with weekly meetings between students and staff partners, as well weekly meetings with other student consultants and the director of the program (Cook-Sather, 2020). All student hours are paid by the hour at the top of student pay scale or students can choose to receive academic credit for the work through completing independent study in a formal unit (Cook-Sather, 2020). These structural aspects of program design may limit universities’ capacity to implement such programs, as they require significant resourcing and time.

In this paper, we explore whether a compacted, fully online program can still provide ample opportunities for staff development and create a scalable model that more universities could adopt. The structure of our program was designed as a one-to-one student-staff matching, with just three online meetings over a trimester (16 week) period, each lasting approximately 1 h. To keep the time commitments for program participation to a minimum, we also required no pre-training, but rather emailed participants a document outlining the program’s structure (though future iterations will include a link to a short video as well). Meetings were to be held online and at a time/date organised by the student and staff member. Further, while we encourage staff to bring their own questions, reflections, and resources (e.g. presentation slides, learning videos) to sessions, we also provided optional activities for staff who either did not have the time to prepare or were unsure what to ask (see Table 1).

Table 1. Overview of optional activities.

Meeting	Sample Activities
Meeting 1	Introduction. Ask one another: why did you choose to study/work at the university? Discuss what makes a great subject? When you imagine a great subject do you picture something online or in-person? How has the transition to online teaching and learning been? Student mentor and staff mentee each to provide highs and lows of their experiences.
Meeting 2	Reflect on what is ‘student success’? Staff, what do you consider success for students? Students, how does this align to your perceptions of success? Together using an online whiteboard create a mind map of student success barriers. What themes or categories arise?
Meeting 3	Reflect on whether online teaching and learning has been more or less inclusive to diverse students? What have the pros and cons been? Students, provide tips or examples of how staff can make their classroom more inclusive to a range of students.

Study context and methods

Our study took place at Deakin University, located in Victoria, Australia. Deakin University has five campuses and a student cohort of over 65,000. In this study, our definition of disability was aligned with our institutional definition, informed by the Disability Discrimination Act (1992) which includes learning, physical, or sensory disabilities, as well as mental health, neurological, and/or chronic medical conditions. However, we note that growing research has advocated for more inclusive definitions of disability that moves beyond a medical model of disability to recognise the biopsychosocial factors that place individuals at a disadvantage or prevent them from full participation or acceptance in an environment (Bunbury, 2019; Dollinger, O’Shea, et al., 2023). We encourage universities to reflect on how institutional definitions of disability can be adapted to greater recognise the biopsychosocial factors of disability. We also note here that we decided to use the person-first language of disability, rather than the identity-first language as this is too aligned with our institutional practices. Yet we recognise a variation of preferences in this space and encourage readers without lived experience of disability to thoughtfully consider their language choices.

Our program was launched in August 2021, when the state of Victoria was in strict lockdown due to COVID-19. The program matched 100 students with 100 staff in pairs and aimed to foster informal dialogue between participants to reflect on how the university could be more inclusive to students with disabilities. Student mentors were recruited through the university’s disability student support centre, a central service assisting students in the creation of study access plans. Students were only asked to provide their course, we did not ask them to share their specific disability or any other detailed information other than their preferred name. Staff mentee recruitment occurred via academic and professional staff distribution lists (e.g. Vice Chancellor's News Update). Both students and staff were selected on a first-in basis, and the program was capped after 100 matches were placed, with any additional sign-ups being advised they would be matched in the following round (to take place the following year). The matching between students and staff was random, however, students were purposefully matched with staff outside of their direct course/discipline to minimise potential power imbalances. All student mentors were compensated for each meeting with an AUD $50 gift voucher.

From 100 initial student mentor/staff mentee pairings in the program, 82 pairings had at least one meeting. The dropout rate (18/100) was due to either student mentors or staff mentees changing their minds or unforeseen circumstances limiting their ability to participate. It is relevant to note that a major organisational restructure was occurring at the university right before the program launched, and some staff who decided not to continue with the program had been affected. Dropout also occurred throughout the duration of the program, as participants struggled to find time to meet or decided the program was not for them. A total of 66 student mentor-staff mentee pairings had at least two meetings, and a total of 60 pairings had all three meetings. This drop-out underscores that even programs with minimal time commitments such as ours, can be difficult for students/staff to make space for.

Our research was situated within an interpretivist paradigm, where reality was seen as subjective, pluralist, and socially constructed. All data were self-reported, by students or by staff, as we wanted to understand what they perceived the benefit to be, and how the program made them feel. We also sought their opinions and advice on whether the model of the program was an appropriate mechanism to support dialogue about inclusive education.

We selected a semi-structured focus group method to collect qualitative data, with student mentors and staff mentees in separate sessions, to support participants to share their perspectives in their own words (Denzin & Ryan, 2007). After institutional ethics approval was obtained (HAE-21-193), all students and staff who had taken part in the mentoring program, including those who had not completed the program, were invited to attend a focus group. Focus groups were hosted online, with each session lasting approximately 1 hour. Four focus groups were conducted: two with staff mentees (total n = 10) and two with student mentors (n = 11). Focus group data were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and de-identified before being analysed inductively using Bazeley’s (2009) three-step process of describing, comparing, and relating. The transcripts of the focus groups were open coded by both members of the research team, searching for patterns and meaning in the data (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). The researchers then met and discussed coding and any differences in interpretation until consensus was achieved.

Results

We identify three major themes arising from our study. The first was that many students and staff were motivated to engage in the program because of the emphasis on dialogue and the opportunity to have a meaningful, ongoing conversation about inclusive education. Secondly, we found that participants often reported positive individual benefits from their participation, including ideas for straightforward modifications to improve their teaching practices. Finally, we found that overall participants perceived the model to be suitable for scalable professional development in inclusive education; however, more work needed to be done to ensure that students’ feedback and ideas were properly recorded and actioned following the meetings.

Dialogue as a motivator to participate

The first theme to arise from our research was that student participants were motivated to engage in the program because it provided an opportunity to have a dialogue with staff about students’ lived experiences with a disability, medical or mental health condition. One student shared:

I really liked the idea of having the opportunity to discuss with a staff member or an actual tutor about the assessments and possible ways of improving assessment, especially for those with disabilities. I love that idea, because assessments are seen differently for everyone and it’s really lovely, we can have a voice and our voice is heard. (Student Mentor 1)

Student mentors also reflected that through the program they could raise greater awareness about specific aspects of their student experience, such as their individualised access plans. As one student discussed, access plans are ‘overlooked … sometimes lecturers completely don’t even realise you have it unless you remind them, so [the program] was a good way to show that we do need that support’ (Student Mentor 2).

Another student participant echoed the importance of sharing the student voice, as they had previously struggled to find an outlet to discuss their point of view or perspective in their course, … there was no one I could really ask for change. So basically, this [program] was very good to be able to talk to someone, with the hope that this could be different for someone else, because for me [my course] was already finished (Student Mentor 6).

Students also mentioned that the program provided a different, more flexible, mechanism to provide feedback to the university, compared to surveys. In particular, the informal, open-ended nature of the dialogue meant that students and staff could have deeper conversations about topics or issues that they were passionate about, or interested in. For example, students shared:

One of the main reasons I would do this [program] again is because it’s a much more personal way to give feedback than a survey… in surveys, it’s like what they want to get out of you, and you don’t necessarily feel like you’re giving the right answer… (Student Mentor 3)

[The program] gave me a much stronger student voice and … it was giving feedback that was absolutely from the source, you know, kind of undiluted, unchanneled. (Student Mentor 8)

Another student participant reflected that in surveys they felt their feedback was ‘quantified’ but that through the program they had the opportunity to explain their responses ‘… and get into the reasons about why they feel that way’ (Student Mentor 10).

Staff also voiced that dialogue with a student was the main driver for their engagement in the program. For example, one staff participant reflected on the opportunity to gain access to the student voice, ‘I can actually speak to a student, with my big list of questions’ (Staff Mentee 4). Building on this, many staff saw the program as a mechanism to harness students’ expertise in their lived experience to improve their teaching and/or service provision. To illustrate, a staff member shared that they wanted to understand what it was like for students who were navigating various aspects of the student experience, and noted:

They might be contacting us for extensions and things, but we don’t actually know them as people, so I think that was really what drove me to get involved and just sort of meet a student and hear from them what their experiences are like actually navigating the course when they’ve got all those sorts of extra requirements. (Staff Mentee 8)

Improvement to inclusion and access in practices

Emerging from the data was how the program facilitated staff participants’ reflective practice on inclusion and equity. This finding is particularly relevant, as previous scholars have noted that while there is growing emphasis on inclusion in learning environments, there remain few mechanisms or models where student voices can help shape practices (Ajjawi et al., 2023; Tai et al., 2022). However, in the program staff were able to harness the one-to-one dialogue with students to brainstorm practical ideas on how to improve inclusivity. One staff participant reflected:

I’d say [the program] opened my eyes, and for the first time I actually realized that when I run a unit, I have to have that unit guide in an accessible format, which is always a PDF. So simple things like that which are doable, and we’ve been missing on that. (Staff Mentee 2)

In fact, rather than staff feeling overwhelmed by the difficulty in changing their practices to support diverse learners, many remarked on the simplicity of some of their student mentors’ suggestions. One staff member discussed ‘I think probably the most surprising thing for me was just how easy some of things are that we can do to make a huge difference’ (Staff Mentee 1). For example, staff discussed simple modifications such as turning on live transcripts, checking the language or clarity of assessment instructions, and offering online discussion boards for students to ask questions informally.

Staff also commented on the honesty and effort that students put into the mentoring sessions. Again, rather than see this as confronting, many staff members noted positively that they appreciated the confidence of student mentors to share their thoughts. One staff member, for example, discussed:

[The program] is very successful because [my mentor] frankly tells me things … for example, she [tells me when] my teaching is not bad [speaker laughs], quite good or where I can improve, so I’m really happy she’s very open. (Staff Mentee 10)

Staff further shared that the program helped them better understand students with disabilities' unique experiences and the current gaps or barriers to supporting their success at the university. Many staff members mentioned how they built greater empathy for students, as one staff participant shared:

My student [mentor] struggled quite a bit with anxiety and depression and they were extremely busy in all of the work that they did … they had a number of jobs that they balanced, along with the studying as well and they came from an international background. (Staff Mentee 6)

Students also expressed a range of emotions in sharing their personal experiences on how to improve inclusion. Some students saw the program as a cathartic outlet to share experiences that would have otherwise gone unknown to the university. As one student discussed:

Every point that I brought up [with my mentee] was addressed on the spot within a week, everything was validated and all the frustrations that I was getting fed back to from students or for myself was addressed, so I felt that the entire sessions were extremely helpful. (Student Mentor 4)

Students also expressed feelings of empowerment as they reflected on how they helped change staff practice or conceptions of disability. One student told a story about the advice they had given to their staff member to let down their guard more with students and just ‘be human’. They reflected on this by further sharing,

[When I told him to just be human] he really appreciated it and really felt like it needed to be discussed. [I told him] it’s okay to have kids, it’s okay to have animals, it’s okay to, you know, do a zoom whilst commuting, it’s okay to be a human. And he actually said to me ‘I shared that with others’, I felt that … and I went, okay even that alone, knowing that he shared it [with colleagues], it’s going to be heard, it’s going to make an impact … and that felt good. (Student Mentor 9)

Other students were surprised by how much of an impact their one-to-one dialogue with staff could have. One student remarked, ‘The person I was partnered with … said they’d never had a conversation with someone as deeply, with a person of my generation, other than their own son’ (Student Mentor 7). Students also noted that they felt the power of the program was in its repositioning of students as ‘mentors’ and the corresponding shift in power, as one student discussed,

I think in a program like this, like everyone wants to feel purposeful, and I think that it ties into that as well and sort of flipping it in terms of, like, it’s not students being mentored by teachers, it’s the other way around. I would say, you know, it’s as if we can be a resource to the university, like a human resource … in terms of our experience. (Student Mentor 11)

Students mentoring staff a model for scalable practice

Through our study we found that most participants found the program to be an appropriate structure to support ongoing, scalable professional development for inclusive education. One staff participant discussed that the minimum time commitment meant they could encourage even busy colleagues to participate:

I know [some staff] would have hesitated at too much commitment, knowing that they didn’t want to let the student down, but three hours, is that all, yeah, no worries I can find time for three hours. (Staff Mentee 1)

Another staff member indicated that they enjoyed the model because of the informal nature of the program and the fact that they ‘did not have to tick any boxes, which was really great I think’ (Staff Mentee 2). And while initially a concern about the program’s model, participants also expressed that the three 1-h meetings were sufficient to build a meaningful relationship with the student. One staff, for example, shared that the program supported them to ‘recognise the student as a person, as an individual, and not just as a number or a student ID’ (Staff Mentee 7). Another staff member reflected on their hope that they would stay in touch with their student mentor,

I definitely feel connected to my student, I’ll be sending … I already have actually sent her an email to see, you know, wish her a nice break and things like that. (Staff Mentee 4)

However, reflecting on the program’s model, students also shared concerns that the feedback or guidance they provided in individual mentoring sessions would not be properly recorded or actioned afterward. One student participant summarised this concern by sharing:

My only concern, and I expressed it to [my mentor] as well, was that we are making a lot of effort here, both of us … and I don’t want to say this as if this is the reality of things, it was just a thought, but that this is not going to be helpful in any way or heard later at the highest spheres, you know. That was the only thing, because I’m a bit, maybe disenchanted, I don’t know if there is a word in English, where you lose your hopes, you’re not naive anymore, you know, kind of knowing how things work. (Student Mentor 6)

Students recommended that while they encouraged the program to continue and involve greater numbers of staff and students, more consideration should be placed on how students’ feedback and ideas would be collected and distributed to lead to change beyond that dialogue with an individual staff member. One student expressed this with the comment:

I hope that over time, whether it be that this sort of thing continues over the coming years and it becomes like an integrated way of like asking, getting this feedback … like obviously it takes time … but I think part of the reason why people are so fatigued with surveys, is because you put in your answers, and then you never see or hear anything and you kind of like, oh like did anyone even read it like or was it just put into a data set and stored away? (Student Mentor 11)

Students mentoring staff program: a model for scalable inclusion

The findings from our study showcase how the ‘Students Mentoring Staff’ program provided an authentic and scalable approach to academic development for inclusive education that supports greater understanding of disability, and how to support students with disabilities in higher education. Aligning to previous findings on the benefits of student voice in improving teaching and learning practices (Bovill et al., 2011; Cook-Sather, 2020) we found that students with disabilities were highly effective mentors to staff, as they provided tangible, simple suggestions to improve equity and inclusion in a range of learning environments. Critically, we also found that the informal program still had the potential to create deep relationships between students and staff. As universities continue to explore online flexible learning, it is important that we do not lose the value of student–staff relationships, a well-documented pillar of student retention and success (Felten & Lambert, 2020; Gravett et al., 2021).

Numerous scholars have argued that supporting inclusion of students with disabilities using only a case-by-case approach, such as the creation of individual learning access plans, is neither practical nor achievable (Collins et al., 2019; Edwards, 2022). The alternative to this, as seen by university leadership, may be to create top-down standards that university staff must abide by. Yet, as previous scholarship on academic development has continually shown, mandated changes implemented on staff rarely work unless contextualised for the staff in their discipline or area (Lisewski, 2021; Trowler, 2019). As we have shown in our program’s model here, rather than homogenise and standardise the learning experience, one-to-one dialogue with students can provide first-hand learning experiences for staff to develop awareness and understanding of how to support inclusive learning environments for diverse students. Importantly, it also provides a relationship-rich outlet for students to have their voices and perspectives listened to. Our findings showed that this was a compelling motivation for many of the student mentors, and a valuable alternative to survey methods, which often left them feeling unfulfilled.

Our results, however, did indicate that student mentors questioned how their feedback and ideas shared through the program were going to lead to ‘real’ change. As others have asserted, it is critical that programs that collect student voices and perspectives, also ‘close the loop’ (Dollinger & Vanderlelie, 2021; Shah et al., 2017) and do not continue to extend the burden for more students to provide their voices to fix unaddressed issues. While we have since now implemented a post-session feedback form, where staff can indicate what they have learned, we continue to critically reflect on how students’ shared voices can have the impact that our student participants often desired and hoped for.

Conclusion

Amid growing calls for dedicated inclusive education programs for academic development (e.g. Edwards, 2022; Pitman, 2022), the program presented here sought to explore a scalable, yet relational model that situated students with disabilities as mentors to staff. With limited funding and staffing, we were able to support staff and students to engage in authentic dialogue and discuss how to create equitable learning spaces. However, we acknowledge programs such as this are only one step to addressing the much larger complex issue of creating university cultures that are welcoming to diverse learners, and diverse staff. We encourage through this paper for universities to adopt practical, informal programs such as the ’Students Mentoring Staff’ program to address the low-stakes barriers to inclusion and create spaces for deeper conversations moving forward.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mollie Dollinger

Mollie Dollinger is a Senior Lecturer in Learning Futures at Deakin University. Her research interests include student partnership, student equity, and graduate employability.

Lisa Hanna

Lisa Hanna is Dean of Students at Deakin University. Her research interests include health promotion, social inclusion, and cross-cultural wellbeing.