Rooted in contact theory, the Paralympic Skill Lab (PSL) program is designed to guide participants toward recognizing and understanding the experiences of disabled people to support new pathways of thought and changed attitudes. The purpose of this inquiry was to explore the experiences of college students in a goalball and sitting volleyball…

In studies that assess perceptions of autistic people by non-autistic people, researchers often ask participants to review vignettes depicting fictional autistic characters. However, few studies have investigated whether non-autistic peers accurately identify these hypothetical individuals as being on the autism spectrum. Accurately ascribing…

Intellectual Disabilities (ID) remains an underrepresented topic in social work curriculum, which perhaps results in relatively few social workers opting to practice with people with ID. To address this curricular gap, the article describes three need-based service learning initiatives developed in partnership with community agencies. Students…

Research on attitudes toward college students with high-functioning autism (HFA) in college settings produced mixed findings. This study builds on prior research by examining the affective and cognitive attitudes toward vignette characters with and without an autism label. Students from two public Southern California Universities (n = 712)…

This research explores the experiences of Beth, a university student in the UK, as she comes to be labelled as 'dyslexic', and as she has her diagnosis taken away. Through use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and discourse analysis, the research seeks to understand how Beth made sense of these experiences, and to explore the…

The purpose of this study is to better understand the subjective viewpoints of faculty members toward students with psychological disabilities as a subset of the larger student population with unique needs due to the hidden nature of the barriers they experience. This Q methodology study explores the views of 29 faculty who have taught students…

A service-learning project was conducted with counselors-in-training to increase self-efficacy for interacting with individuals with unique abilities/intellectual disabilities. Counselors-in-training (N=27) completed a semester-long service-learning project and took a pre and post assessment. The results indicated that self-efficacy improved for…

This research study presents the Scale of Dis/ability Apparentness in Education Settings (SDAES) to explore the complex and dynamic nature of dis/abled apparentness among college students. The study combines qualitative and quantitative data to examine five key domains: Environment, Ableism, Identity, Taking Action, and Embodied Dis/ability,…

This paper explores the lived experience of university students with dyslexia, focusing on identity and self-esteem. The qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with five students with dyslexia and discussions with learning support tutors at four UK universities. Thematic analysis of the interview data revealed the impact of dyslexia's…

This ethnographic study investigates the teaching and learning of the design process in biomedical engineering classrooms. Through classroom fieldwork, we examine how faculty and students conceptualize and implement the design process, focusing on its linear teaching methods, the abstraction of users, and the reinforcement of expertise…

Background: This study examines stigma and self-stigma towards individuals with intellectual disabilities among university students, focusing on cognitive, emotional and behavioural dimensions. It highlights the negative impact on social inclusion and the importance of educational interventions. Methods: A quantitative pre-/post-test design with a…

Academic accommodations have become quite commonplace in universities in the Global North. At their best, accommodations support the rights of all students to an education, enabling students with disabilities or those who learn differently to succeed in the university and beyond. But are accommodations truly at their best? Reflecting on his own…

The article discusses recent Higher Education (HE) initiatives to introduce the Sunflower Scheme, which enables students with hidden disabilities to 'discreetly' indicate the existence of a disability to access support. A significant problem related to persons with hidden disabilities lies in their frequent reluctance to disclose their…

Microaggressions are daily insults to individuals that communicate messages of exclusion, inferiority, and abnormality. The term microaggression was originally used to explain the experiences of racial minorities. This term has also been used to explain the experiences of other individuals with oppressed identities. More recently, the term ableist…

The neurodiversity paradigm arose from the autistic community as a part of a selfdefinition process and in direct opposition to medical models of disability which continue to dominate education policy, practice, and research. Drawing heavily from fields such as disability studies, critical (dis)ability, and feminist scholarship, neurodiversity…