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Disabled people continue to be significantly underrepresented and marginalized in engineering. Current reports indicate that approximately 26 percent of US adults have some form of disability. Yet only 6 percent of undergraduate students enrolled in engineering programs belong to this group. Several barriers have been identified that discourage and even prohibit people with disabilities from participating in engineering including arduous accommodations processes, lack of institutional support, and negative peer, staff, and faculty attitudes. These barriers are perpetuated and reinforced by a variety of ableist sociocultural norms and definitions that rely on popularized tropes and medicalized models that influence the ways this group experiences school to become engineers. In this paper, we seek to contribute to conversations that shape understanding of disability identity and the ways it is conceptualized in engineering programs. We revisit interview data from an ongoing grounded theory exploration of professional identity formation of undergraduate civil engineering students who identify as having one or more disabilities. Through our qualitative analysis, we identified overarching themes that contribute to understanding of how participants define and integrate disability identity to form professional identities and the ways they reshape and contribute to the civil engineering field through this lens. Emergent themes include experiencing/considering disability identity as a fluid experience, as a characteristic that ‘sets you apart’, and as a medicalized symptom or condition. Findings from this work can be used by engineering educators and administrators to inform more effective academic and personal support structures to destigmatize disability and promote the participation and inclusion of students and colleagues with disabilities in engineering and in our academic and professional communities.
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Navigating a Sea of Obstacles: Ocean Science for People with Disabilities
The geoscience community discussion on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) most often focuses on increasing the participation of underrepresented groups based on race, ethnicity, and gender. Disability status is often overlooked, even though people with disabilities are underrepresented in the US STEM workforce by a factor of 3 compared to factors of 1.5 and 1.3 for women and underrepresented minorities, respectively (NCSES, 2023). The unemployment rate (the proportion of the workforce population that is unemployed but actively seeking work) is twice as high for people with disabilities as it is for those without a disability, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/disabl.pdf).
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- Award ID(s):
- 2231647
- PAR ID:
- 10544038
- Publisher / Repository:
- The Oceanography Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Oceanography
- Volume:
- 36
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1042-8275
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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null (Ed.)We are not experts in this field. We are learners. We are a group of a teacher education professor and three future teachers focused on STEM equity, and who have become painfully aware of the exclusion of disability from discussions on equitable STEM teaching and learning in the United States. This paper is a review of the literature experiences of learners with disabilities. We examine the underrepresentation of people with disabilities in STEM fields through the lenses of STEM, disability, and education. Our goal is to encourage other educators and researchers to broaden their equity lenses to regularly include disability, rather than viewing it as an issue siloed to special education and disability studies. We write this paper with the hope of inviting you to be co-learners and co-teachers with us in normalizing the conversation around disability.more » « less
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We are not experts in this field. We are learners. We are a group of a teacher education professor and three future teachers focused on STEM equity, and who have become painfully aware of the exclusion of disability from discussions on equitable STEM teaching and learning in the United States. This paper is a review of the literature experiences of learners with disabilities. We examine the underrepresentation of people with disabilities in STEM fields through the lenses of STEM, disability, and education. Our goal is to encourage other educators and researchers to broaden their equity lenses to regularly include disability, rather than viewing it as an issue siloed to special education and disability studies. We write this paper with the hope of inviting you to be co-learners and co-teachers with us in normalizing the conversation around disability.more » « less
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Context: Within higher education, reports show that approximately 6% of Australian college students and 13% of U.S. college students have identified as having a disability to their institution of higher education. Findings from research in K-12 education report that students with disabilities often leave secondary school with lower college aspirations and are discouraged from taking engineering-related courses. Those who do enrol are often not supported effectively and must navigate physical, cultural, and bureaucratic university systems in order to access resources necessary for success in school and work. This lack of support is problematic as cognitive, developmental, mental health, and physical disabilities can markedly shape the ways in which students perceive and experience school, form professional identities, and move into the engineering workforce. However, little work has explored professional identity development within this population, specifically within a single engineering discipline such as civil engineering. Purpose: To move beyond tolerance and actively embrace students with diverse perspectives in engineering higher education, the purpose of this study is to understand the ways in which undergraduate students who experience disability form professional identities as civil engineers. Approach: Drawing on the sensitizing concepts of identity saliency, intersectionality, and social identity theory, we utilize Constructivist Grounded Theory (GT) to explore the influences of and interactions among students' disability and professional identities within civil engineering. Semi-structured interviews, each lasting approximately 90 minutes, were conducted with undergraduate civil engineering students who identified as having a disability. Here, we present our findings from the initial and focused coding phases of our GT analysis. Results: Our analyses revealed two themes warranting further exploration: 1) varying levels of disability identity saliency in relation to the development of a professional identity; and 2) conflicting colloquial and individual conceptualizations of disability. Overall, it has been observed that students' experiences with and perceptions of these themes tend to vary based on characteristics of an experienced disability. Conclusions: Students with disabilities experience college - and form professional identities - in a variety of ways. While further research is required to delineate how disability shapes college students' professional identities and vice versa, gaining an understanding of student experiences can yield insights to help us create educational spaces that better allow students with disabilities to flourish in engineering and make engineering education more inclusive.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2024.106
