A blueprint for change: Rethinking the narrative of support for students with disability
Erin Canavan, University of Southern Queensland
The landscape of higher education is shifting beneath our feet. The multitude of ‘moving parts’ currently at play for the sector – including changing public perceptions of the value of higher education, an increasingly prominent and pervasive ‘accountability agenda,’ and fundamental questions surrounding the financial sustainability of institutions – demand the development of innovative, sustainable approaches to supporting students.
As such, this period of rapid change and heightened uncertainty for the sector catalysed the need for the Accessibility and Disability Support Team at one regional Queensland university to reflect on what support means for students with disability in our context. Importantly, these reflections prompted our team to start reconfiguring some of our processes and practices to adapt to these broader, ever-evolving realities.
One of the key drivers of our change proposal was an analysis of retrospective data related to the volume, nature, and use of adjustments our service previously recommended to ‘support’ students with disability to access their studies. This examination revealed a previous conformity to the (arguably) deeply ingrained view of support for students with disabilities in higher education being considered through a deficit lens.
Critical reflection on some of my own previous approaches as a practitioner – particularly the idea that (however unintentionally) I may have provided ‘support’ which reinforced a reliance on adjustments, rather than building students’ capabilities, confidence, and self-reliance – also underscored the importance of considering a more adaptive way of working as an accessibility and disability support service.
While there are a number of philosophical, theoretical, and practical factors shaping the proposed changes to our service, they are collectively underpinned by a focus on considering and implementing support from a strengths-based perspective, and advocating for, recommending, and putting in place supports which are universally available to all students.
While these ‘core pillars’ could be applied solely as an approach to support for students with disability, current national policy imperatives and legislation also prompted us to consider how our service provision can capture the needs of our students more holistically. Specifically, our change proposal also aims to identify and address students’ support needs more comprehensively (for example, by providing tailored, multidisciplinary support in situations where there may be intersections between a diagnosed medical condition or disability, and other unique circumstances impacting on an individual’s ability to access their studies).
Moving forward, it is also our intention to enact service provision which recommends reasonable adjustments to support students as a ‘backup measure.’ The fundamental focus of student engagement with our service (irrespective of the circumstances) will be on building skills, to support the development of self-determination, autonomy, and professional readiness for students’ next steps after their university studies.
While this more nuanced approach to service provision is a key component of our change proposal, we have also considered how we can better align the support document which students often receive following registration with our service with our broader change principles.
We are particularly conscious of how a new title for this document, alongside content which captures our focus on more comprehensive and responsive support recommendations, might more accurately reflect the diverse student cohorts accessing support over the course of their university studies.
In the long term, it is our hope that, alongside more quantifiable evidence of impact (like improved retention and completion rates for students with disability), the collective effect of our proposed changes might ‘shift the pendulum’ of the aforementioned deficit discourse underlying accepted, ‘expected’ practice for disability support services in higher education.
The nature and scope of the reforms we are suggesting are ambitious, and as such, we are mindful that our blueprint for change is still in its infancies.
The specifics of final changes to document titles, contents, and information about our approach to service provision are still in process. Ongoing reflection and refinement will therefore be instrumental as we continue stakeholder consultation and move towards implementing these changes.
Regardless of the timeline, though, we are optimistic that our blueprint in practice can spark transformative changes – to our approach to student support, and perhaps more importantly, to shaping how students see themselves and what they are capable of achieving throughout and beyond their university studies.
Erin Canavan, Senior Accessibility and Disability Officer, University of Southern Queensland