Teaching Experiences of Inclusive Spanish STEM Faculty with Students with Disabilities

(2023) 21:993–1012 Vol.:(0123456789) International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-022-10276-4 1 3 Teaching Experiences ofInclusive Spanish STEM Faculty withStudents withDisabilities AnabelMoriña1 · InmaculadaOrozco1 Received: 30 September 2021 / Accepted: 6 April 2022 © The Author(s) 2022 Abstract This paper explores the experiences of 14 inclusive STEM faculty members from five Spanish universities who taught students with disabilities. Their students with disabilities nominated them for having contributed to their success in their degrees. The article presents part of a larger qualitative study comprising individual interviews with faculty members. Data were analysed through an inductive system of categories and codes. The results show what the faculty did when they knew they had students with disabilities studying their subjects, how they valued their experiences with disability and what recommendations they would make to other colleagues regarding how to be more inclusive. The conclusions suggest that, in order to respond to diversity, faculty must be well-informed and well-trained, contact the disability office and plan the lectures in a proactive and accessible way, making reasonable adjustments. The experiences of these inclusive professionals can help other members of the university community to perceive disability as an opportunity to improve teaching practices, learn how to help their students with disabilities and design educational practices for all. Keywords Disability· Higher education· Inclusive education· Qualitative study· Spain· STEM faculty Introduction Education is a fundamental human right. However, the world of science is replete with social and cultural barriers to youth participation from underrepresented communities (Hinojosa et al., 2021). Specifically in the university context, ensuring * Anabel Moriña [email protected] Inmaculada Orozco [email protected] 1 Department ofTeaching andEducational Organization, Faculty ofEducation, Universidad de Sevilla, C/ Pirotecnia, s/n, 41013Seville, Spain / Published online: 28 April 2022 A.Moriña, I.Orozco 1 3 learning opportunities for everyone throughout the life cycle remains a challenge (United Nations, 2015). Higher education (HE) still has a long way to go to guarantee that the rights of individual students are not infringed and to create environments in which the entire university community feels welcomed (Nieminen, 2022; Sandoval etal., 2021). For example, several studies have shown that students with disabilities suffer and struggle continuously to survive in a university context that is not equipped to support them adequately and effectively (Secules etal., 2018). Over time, disability has been understood from different perspectives. The ‘social model of disability’ (Oliver, 1988) posits that disability is not an individual problem as the medical model pointed out but rather derives from the barriers generated by the environment. In this sense, according to Barton (1996), the practices, attitudes and policies of the social context are those that generate the difficulties and/or facilitators that hinder or foster access and participation. However, the university culture continues imposing barriers to diverse student learning and participation. In most cases, these obstacles are linked to the need for faculty to receive more training in inclusive education (Carballo etal., 2021; Lorenzo-Lledó, etal., 2020). Therefore, in order to prevent the exclusion of vulnerable groups and to help ensure that everybody can access the labour market, universities must strive to guarantee that all students can participate in the learning process with the necessary reasonable adjustments (Braun etal., 2018; Scanlon etal., 2018). To make this possible, it is necessary to re-emphasise faculty’s responsibility to carry out an inclusive pedagogy that supports the presence, participation and success of all students (Gale etal., 2017). In this way, faculty become key players in students’ inclusion (Carballo etal., 2021; López-Gavira etal., 2021). Through the voices of faculty members, this paper presents an analysis of their experiences with students with disabilities. Unlike other previous works that identify faculty as a barrier (Carballo etal., 2021), in this study, faculty members are facilitators of learning processes. The participants in this study were selected by their students with disabilities for having contributed to their inclusion. All participants were specialised in different fields (science, engineering and technology). Spanish Context andUniversity Students withDisabilities The structure of university education in Spain, which leads to the award of official degrees, consists of two levels: (a) undergraduate studies, with a duration of 4years, which aim to prepare students for the exercise of professional activities, and (b) postgraduate studies, which include master’s degrees (1 or 2years) and doctorate programmes (lastingbetween3 and 5years). In Spanish universities, in addition to face-to-face training, virtual learning platforms (such as Blackboard Collaborate or Moodle) have been used for years as technological resources to support the teaching and learning process. Faculty training in Spain is voluntary and free of charge. Universities have training centres that regularly offer courses on various topics: teaching methodologies, technologies, languages and social skills, among others. However, training on inclusive education and disability care is less frequent. 994 1 3 Teaching Experiences ofInclusive Spanish STEM Faculty with… In terms of disability, the number of students with disabilities is increasing. In particular, among the 19,910 students with disabilities who attended university in the last academic year for which statistics are available (2019–2020), 33% were in STEM disciplines (Universia Foundation, 2021). In Spain, Organic Law 4/2007 of universities states that university environments must be accessible to all people. It also states that institutions shall ensure equal opportunities, non-discrimination and universal accessibility (Official State Gazette, 2007). The same is also reflected with the Royal Legislative Decree 1/2013 (Official State Gazette, 2013) on the rights of persons with disabilities and their social inclusion (resources, educational support and adjustments that respond to their needs and demands). Moreover, by law, it is compulsory for all universities to have disability offices. These will be responsible for offering the support and services required by these students during their university studies (Royal Decree 1791/2010). To this end, the disability support offices will be responsible for informing the faculty members (if the student authorises it) of the presence of a student with a disability in their subject and of the adjustments they have to make in order to enable the student to access the curriculum. This means that until the student initiates the request for help to the office, the office cannot communicate with the faculty. Therefore, Spanish faculty members do not know whether or not they have students with disabilities (especially invisible disabilities) until they receive an email from the office or the student voluntarily decides to talk to the faculty member in person about their needs. STEM Faculty Members andTheir Experiences withDisability In the STEM fields, Scanlon etal. (2018) concluded that, although a large number of students with disabilities enter university, many of them encounter difficulties when attempting to complete their degree. In some cases, students drop out due to academic issues, unfriendly environments, feelings of rejection and concern about not being suitable for the job market or future training (Geisler & Rolka, 2021; Taylor etal., 2020; Walker etal., 2016). Moreover, previous studies of STEM faculty members have demonstrated that they had little or no experience with people with disabilities (Braun etal., 2018; Da Silva etal., 2016). Other studies also conclude that faculty members have low expectations about their students with disabilities and do not feel capable of addressing their needs (Braun etal., 2018; Da Silva etal., 2016; Moon etal., 2011), especially in the case of hidden disabilities (Grimes etal., 2019). This makes faculty a barrier to inclusion (Martins etal., 2018; Osborne, 2019). On the one hand, other challenges identified by the literature (through the voices of faculty members) in relation to the STEM fields are the time taken by faculty members to make adjustments in their discipline (Birt et al., 2017; Moon et al., 2011; Moriarty, 2007), architectural and environmental barriers in classrooms, a non-inclusive mindset (Moriarty, 2007) and a lack of institutional support (Rao & Gartin, 2003). 995 A.Moriña, I.Orozco 1 3 On the other hand, through the voices of students with disabilities, other barriers have also been identified, including budget cuts (Da Silva etal., 2016), a lack of knowledge and understanding among faculty members, inadequate strategies for responding to hidden or more severe disabilities (Apanasionok etal., 2019; Lovett et al., 2015), the costly preparation required to adapt teaching resources and classmates themselves (Da Silva etal., 2016). The Need forTraining Among STEM Faculty Members Listening to the voices of faculty members reveals that the difficulties encountered by students with disabilities during their time at university underscore the urgent need for sensitive, in-service training schemes for STEM faculty. This would enable them to contribute to the learning of students with disabilities by providing the necessary supports and making reasonable adjustments (Birt etal., 2017; Love etal., 2015). The importance of training is highlighted also by Scanlon etal. (2018), who found that many faculty members were unaware of the work carried out by disability services until they received information about them from their institution’s office. They also lack knowledge about inclusive education, types of disability, inclusive teaching strategies, how to make adjustments and how to use assistive technologies in the lab (Moon etal., 2011). The results reported by Behling and Linder (2017) also corroborate the need for training, as STEM faculty members may even feel that it is not their job to make simple adjustments. The study by Rao and Gartin (2003) clearly shows that making adjustments does not mean giving someone a special treatment but is a legal responsibility of the faculty. Moriarty (2007) and Ross and Yerrick (2015) also suggest that this negative attitude may be due to a lack of inclusive thinking, whose absence among faculty members makes it much more likely that they will teach in a traditional way, without focusing on the person. For their part, Walker et al. (2016) proposed that these professionals need to change the nature of their instruction, moving toward student-centred teaching approaches. However, the difficulties encountered in HE in relation to disability can be overcome, as attested by a number of promising studies (Carballo etal., 2021; Sandoval etal., 2021), which conclude that, when faculty members are trained in disability and inclusive education, their sensitivity to diversity and competence in inclusive education improves, resulting in actions which impact the entire student body. Moreover, other studies highlight the fact that the most effective teaching is that which is sensitive to the potential of each person and promotes the participation of all students by incorporating innovative and varied teaching methods (Moriarty, 2007; Taylor etal., 2020). This model of teaching can benefit all students and addresses their needs and interests through a proactive teaching process which responds to multiple forms of representation, expression and engagement (Ferreira & Lawrie, 2019; Scanlon etal., 2018). 996 1 3 Teaching Experiences ofInclusive Spanish STEM Faculty with… Inclusive Pedagogy asLevers fortheTransformation ofUniversities The literature on STEM and disability highlights that dropout among students with disabilities is not caused by their individual needs but rather by the relationship between those needs, planning, resources and teaching practices (Lewis & Fisher, 2016). The inclusive pedagogy model (Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011; Gale & Mills, 2013) is an approach that recognises the value of all individuals, avoiding the categorisation of those who are considered different, such as students with disabilities. Inclusive pedagogy implies that decisions made when teaching are determined not only by the professional knowledge, skills and actions of faculty members but also by the values and beliefs that they hold about students, the nature of teaching and learning and social processes and interactions. Therefore, teaching attitudes influence what is done and how it is done. Adopting this inclusive approach means caring about the people being taught, paying attention to their emotional well-being and ensuring a positive faculty–student relationship, all of which are vital to the development of teaching practices that are respectful of students with disabilities. To this end, Moriña (2019) emphasises the importance of emotions, affectivity and horizontal relationships. Nevertheless, an institutional culture that is properly supported and resourced, and which includes professional development, is also underpinning (Carballo etal., 2021). Studies such as those by Da Silva etal. (2016) and Minkara etal. (2015) highlight support networks and identify the importance of academics’ efforts and coordination with disability staff and services, as well as other colleagues and student learning communities. The extant literature within the STEM fields focuses primarily on students with disabilities (Groen-McCall etal., 2018; Pearson & Boskovich, 2019), and no studies have explored the narratives of those faculty considered by their own students to be inclusive. This is one of the main gaps in the literature that the present study aims to fill. Furthermore, the studies which have analysed the experiences of faculty members with students with disabilities have mostly been carried out from a quantitative approach rather than from a qualitative one (Rao & Gartin, 2003), as in our case. Another contribution made by this study is that, unlike all existing works (most of which focus on the primary and high school stages rather than on HE), it also includes recommendations for other colleagues. This study can therefore help universities to move forward by transforming STEM campuses into more inclusive and equitable settings. Learning about the disability experiences of faculty may be particularly relevant for other colleagues who teach STEM degrees, due to the scarcity of existing research and the lack of training identified in these fields (Da Silva etal., 2016; Kurth etal., 2020; Moon etal., 2011). Thus, we aimed to answer three research questions: 1) How do faculty members act upon learning that they will be teaching a student with a disability? 2) How do faculty members value their experiences with students with disabilities? 997 A.Moriña, I.Orozco 1 3 3) What recommendations would faculty members make to other colleagues to help them become more inclusive? Method The results of this qualitative study are part of a larger research project (EDU2016- 76587-R and PID2020-112761RB-I00) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, which aims to identify, analyse and understand what Spanish faculty in various fields are doing to carry out inclusive pedagogy and how and why they are doing it (Gale & Mills, 2013). In this paper, we focus on inclusive STEM faculty and explore their experiences in relation to disability. Participants The participants were selected on the basis of nominations by their own students with disabilities, who identified them as having contributed to their learning, participation and achievement at university. During the recruitment process, the disability offices of various Spanish universities helped us by contacting students with disabilities and asking them to nominate those faculty members who had contributed to their inclusion. Specifically, to ensure the suitability of the sample, students were provided with a description of the characteristics of an inclusive faculty member (Moriña etal.,2015): ‘someone who believes that all students have potential; facilitates learning processes; is active in teaching; uses different methodological strategies; is concerned about student learning; is flexible, willing to help; motivates students; maintains close relationships and encourages interactions between students; and makes students feel that they are important and that they are part of the group’. At the same time, to obtain a considerable number of participants for each area of knowledge, the snowball technique was used (Cohen etal., 2000). Students with disabilities known to the research team from previous projects (related to the barriers and facilitators for inclusion) were asked to participate, and other colleagues (faculty members from different areas of knowledge) who knew and had had students with disabilities in their classroom were also contacted. We initially received 24 nominations, but 10 faculty members refused to participate in the study due to lack of time and personal situations. Thus, the total sample was constituted by 14 STEM faculty members from five public Spanish universities (Table1). Procedure andData Collection In the large qualitative study, we carried out individual semi-structured interviews with faculty, along with classroom observations and face-to-face group interviews with some of their students. In this paper, we only make use of the results of a semistructured interview on beliefs and actions from the point of view of the faculty. 998 1 3 Teaching Experiences ofInclusive Spanish STEM Faculty with… The semi-structured interview script was piloted with other faculty, i.e. faculty members who did not participate in the study, and their suggestions and recommendations were taken into account in the final version. We conducted one interview per participant. Each individual interview lasted an average of 1 h and 30 min. Most interviews were conducted face to face (N = 11). However, due to scheduling difficulties, we adapted to the needs and demands of three faculty members and held their interviews via video call (Skype). Some of the questions we asked them were as follows: When you learn that there is a student with a disability taking your subject, what steps do you take? What would you say about your experience with students with disabilities? What do you like best and least about your experience with students with disabilities? What difficulties have you encountered in working with these students? How has having students with disabilities in the classroom influenced you personally and professionally? If you had to give advice to a colleague who had a student with a disability for the first time, what recommendations would you make? Data Analysis Once all the interviews had been transcribed, they were returned to the participants for review. Following Smith and Deemer (2000), validity in our qualitative research was built on the basis of access and negotiation between the participants and the researchers. Therefore, the participants were able to approve the transcripts and corroborated the accuracy of the transcripts before conducting the analysis. Table 1 Participants’ profile Participant Gender Age Years of teaching experience Field Type of disability of students P1 Female 54 26 Engineering Physical, mental, learning disability (LD) P2 Male 45 20 Science Physical, mental, hearing, visual P3 Male Omitted 35 Science Physical, mental P4 Female 59 20 Science Physical, mental, hearing, LD P5 Male 50 17 Science Physical, mental, hearing P6 Male 40 11 Science Physical, mental, hearing P7 Female 45 20 Science Physical, mental, visual P8 Female 47 20 Engineering Mental, hearing P9 Male 42 14 Engineering LD P10 Male 38 10 Engineering Physical, mental P11 Male 58 25 Technology Mental, hearing P12 Male 53 17.5 Science Mental, hearing P13 Female 40 15 Science Physical, hearing, visual, LD P14 Female 48 15 Science Physical, hearing, visual 999 A.Moriña, I.Orozco 1 3 An inductive system of categories and codes was created to make sense of the information collected (Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2019). The qualitative software Max- QDA12 was used to analyse the data. The data analysis was carried out in two phases. In the first phase of coding, we used a broad and generic category system. In the second phase, new subcodes for the fundamental themes and ideas emerged (Table2). Finally, we analysed each of these subcodes in depth to see if they could be broken down further or merged with other codes. Moreover, to ensure the reliability of the analysis, it was carried out individually by the two authors (Silverman, 2010). Once the individual analysis was conducted, those parts of the interviews which were unclear were discussed and agreed upon by both researchers. Ethical Issues All the participants signed an informed consent form and agreed to the recording and use of the data for the stated research purposes. Additionally, to safeguard the participants’ confidentiality, their real names were replaced with numbers to identify them (P1–P14). In this study, we took into account and respected the ethical principles of the University of Seville and the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI), as well as those of process ethics and practice (Moriña,2021). The research process was approved by the AEI. Results How Do Faculty Members Act Upon Learning thatThey Will Be Teaching aStudent withaDisability? The participants acted in many different ways upon learning they were going to be teaching a student with a disability. Almost all of them (N = 13) explained that they did not give students a special or favourable treatment but provided them with support and personalised attention from the very beginning. For this reason, it was important for faculty members to trust in their abilities, be approachable, make themselves available and offer alternatives. For example, one faculty member explained how, in his classes, he tried to facilitate learning by letting his students record the lessons. With this alternative and by offering support, he ensured that a student with learning difficulties could feel safe in the classroom and listen to the explanations as many times as necessary at home: I usually treat them the same as everyone else. Nevertheless, I remember that I had a student with writing difficulties. I told him that he could record me. (P7) The vast majority (N = 13) also explained that they asked for help and exchanged information with other colleagues. However, their narratives revealed that, above all, they contacted the disability office and followed their recommendations (reasonable 1000 1 3 Teaching Experiences ofInclusive Spanish STEM Faculty with… Table 2 Category and code system Category Description Code Actions Teaching practice when they know that there are students with disabilities in the class Personalised mentoring, information (colleagues, disability services), reasonable adjustments, teamwork in the classroom, depends on student’s collaboration Experience teaching and impact Faculty’ opinions of the experiences they have enjoyed most and least with students with disabilities, as well as their impact Experiences they liked the most: knowledge about types of disabilities, student resilience, disability service and classmates Experiences they liked the least: lack of information and training, invisible disabilities and students who hide their disabilities, architectural barriers, time and effort Impact: professional (opportunity to improve, empathise and value effort) and personal (life lesson, satisfaction and enrichment) Recommendations for inclusion Recommendations that faculty members make to other colleagues to help them become more inclusive Mentoring and naturalness, disability service, specific training in disability, flexibility in the discipline, empathy 1001 A.Moriña, I.Orozco 1 3 reported by Da Silva etal. (2016) or Moon etal. (2011), who argue that determining the measures to be implemented is one of the first steps that faculty members usually take when they have a student with a disability in the classroom. Therefore, training in inclusive education (regardless of the field to which they belong) cannot be an option; it should be compulsory and ongoing (Carballo etal., 2021). Indeed, the results of the present study make it clear that one of the most frustrating experiences of the faculty was becoming aware of their lack of training. This may be due to the fact that these professionals make a concerted effort to do their job to the best of their abilities and feel a strong obligation to ensure that all their students learn (Gale etal., 2017). It would be advisable to create support groups among faculty members to enable them not only to share doubts and interests, but also to reflect on educational practice. Similarly, it is essential for experts in invisible disabilities to offer advice, action strategies and support to universities and their teaching staff, since there are studies which reveal that these are some of the most complex disabilities, which faculty members are least trained to handle (Grimes etal., 2019; Lovett etal., 2015). The experiences of the participants with students with disabilities had such an impact on them that they saw them as an opportunity to improve both professionally (learning to design with everyone in mind or to be more empathetic) and personally (Moriña & Orozco, 2022; Minkara etal., 2015). Regarding recommendations, these faculty members advise other colleagues to make use of tutorials as spaces to establish adequate student communication and to learn about student needs (Secules etal., 2018). They also recommend that students be treated naturally and empathetically, as equal members of the class (Moriña, 2019). Although the faculty members’ awareness may increase, their beliefs are not being reflected in inclusive practices. For this reason, faculty members are also advised to organise emotional education workshops with the participation of students with disabilities, giving them an opportunity to express how they prefer to learn and be treated in class. Moreover, disability offices stand out as essential facilitators (Da Silva et al., 2016; Minkara etal., 2015) and faculty members recommend that other colleagues contact them when they learn they will be teaching students with disabilities. Our findings in this sense were not consistent with those reported by Scanlon et al. (2018), who found that faculty members were unaware of this service. It is important to highlight this finding, since the participants of our study not only had a good attitude, but were also well-informed about the services offered by their university and saw themselves as facilitators for students with disabilities (Moriña & Orozco, 2022). To make universities more inclusive, faculty members should be informed of this service at the start of every academic year, being told clearly what it consists in and how it can help both them and students with disabilities. Moreover, this affective strategy is a significant and novel contribution, since it contradicts studies on STEM that report a negative attitude and a lack of sensitivity among faculty members (Da Silva etal., 2016; Kurth etal., 2020; Moon etal., 2011). The participants in our study also recommend other faculty to keep a flexible teaching. This contribution could be linked to the commitment that universities should have to the universal design for learning (UDL) approach, which allows 1008 1 3 Teaching Experiences ofInclusive Spanish STEM Faculty with… for the existence of a diversity of formats and reasonable adjustments in the teaching–learning process. This variety of possibilities and adaptations benefits not only students with disabilities, but the entire student body (Ferreira & Lawrie, 2019; Sandoval etal., 2021; Scanlon etal., 2018). In our study, the participants stated that they tried to be proactive, thinking and planning multiple forms of expression, representation and engagement. Thus, they acted on the basis of the social model of disability (Oliver, 1988; Blume etal., 2014). In contrast to the conclusions drawn by Da Silva etal. (2016), Moon etal. (2011) and Lewis and Fisher (2014), our study suggests that faculty members do know how to make adjustments and adapt their subject. Limitations andFurther Research The first limitation relates to the need to broaden the context in which the research is carried out. In future studies, it would be advisable to include universities from other countries in order to explore similarities and differences. It would be interesting to hear the voices of students with disabilities and those of inclusive faculty members together, in order to compare the information collected. However, since the results presented in this paper are part of a larger study, we have decided to incorporate only the voice of inclusive faculty members. Future studies should also consider the possibility of designing, implementing and evaluating awareness-raising and training programmes for STEM faculty. These training courses could also be aimed at teaching staff working in any field, serving as workshops for rethinking syllabi and generating best practices for inclusion. Conclusions In this study, STEM faculty members who were nominated by their students with disabilities as being inclusive show that responding in an appropriate way is not a matter of giving some students special treatment but rather a matter of rights, attitude and training. For these participants, not only is it vital to have high expectations and to trust and believe in the abilities of all their students, but they also recognise and design their lessons on the principle that high-quality teaching and learning processes benefit everyone. In conclusion, the experiences of these inclusive faculty members should prompt HE institutions to recognise and value those professionals who are not only excellent in research, but also outstanding professionals who care about and contribute to the success of all their students. It is possible that some faculty members who have not been selected by their students with disabilities may fulfil some of the practices mentioned in this paper (e.g. empathy). However, with this study, we aimed to highlight faculty members selected by their students with disabilities, what these professionals did and how they contributed to an inclusive experience. This nomination ensures that the faculty members of our study not only believe in inclusive 1009 A.Moriña, I.Orozco 1 3 strategies, but also carry them out. These narratives provide guidelines for faculty members to move from rhetoric to action. Funding Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This work was supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain and FEDER funds European Union (grant numbers EDU2016-76587-R/Feder Funds/PID2020-112761RB-I00). Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visithttp:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/. References Apanasionok, M. M., Hastings, R. P., Grindle, C. F., Watkins, R. C., & Paris, A. (2019). 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