Date of Award

Fall 2024

Project Type

Dissertation

Program or Major

English

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

First Advisor

Christina Ortmeier-Hooper

Second Advisor

Cristy Beemer

Third Advisor

Alecia Magnifico

Abstract

While the COVID-19 pandemic, starting in 2020, disrupted the writing education of many students, students with disabilities were particularly impacted. During this same period, college writing instructors worked to adapt and make their pedagogies more accessible in new educational contexts. This IRB-approved qualitative study utilizes principles of Universal Design for Learning to cultivate a methodology that is flexible enough to meet a wide variety of participant needs. The datasets consist of a pilot survey and focus groups of college instructors along with classroom artifacts and a series of interviews with short journal entries from four undergraduate students with disabilities. In investigating the remote/hybrid learning experiences of students with disabilities, this research uncovered that the pandemic meant that students had found new ways to accommodate themselves in their classes to cope with what they saw as “busy work.” Their perception of some work as busy work, however, is based on an incomplete understanding of education. Instructors, for their part, experienced an overwhelming tension between flexibility and accountability: while they expressed wanting to give their students flexibility, they also felt constrained by ableism in academia and normative conceptions of accountability. Both of these tensions—students’ working to accommodate themselves and instructors struggling to give students the flexibility they need—can be partially alleviated by including student voices in more conversations about accessibility and pedagogy. Furthermore, the study suggests that there needs to more opportunities for compositionists, including WPAs, to work with disability services to help develop more writing-specific pedagogies and accommodations, which can be shared with instructors across the curriculum.

Share

COinS