The Technique
Inclusive practices can be very difficult to instill in students when a course may only provide them with a moment of such an experience. To help students change their attitudes towards people with disability, some of my course activities have students doing volunteer placements within the community, engaging directly with those with disability. We also play para-sports in the class, but the technique of changing attitudes shared today is focused on learners’ critique of their world using whatever places and spaces they frequent.
For context, I provide information on [physical, informational, personal, environmental, task] barriers to full participation to my students. One option for having my students identify accessibility and inclusive characteristics of spaces is to have them try to move about while using a wheelchair, but I have instead chosen to ask them to be active within their world and take notice of how it is set up – and for whom.
This means that my students are tasked with becoming active observers as we are all responsible for accessible environments.
I invite my students to go out into the community and find an example of what they see as an accessibility issue. They then take a photo of what they are seeing and bring it back to the classroom.
My students find this activity to be the single most impactful assignment to get the idea across. The activity brings the spaces they live and work within conscious view so they can be evaluated.
This pass/fail assignment allows students to be free in their approach to meeting the assignment criteria as an active participant in their community.
A bit of light reading that started it all – on changing attitudes through contact theory; Applying Contact Theory in Inclusive Education: A Systematic Review on the Impact of Contact and Information on the Social Participation of Students with Disabilities.
How I Use It
After an in-class discussion of accessibility issues, I outline the pass/fail activity in which students are tasked to go out into the world (e.g., their dorm, workplace, bus) to observe and document (by taking a photo) an instance of a perceived accessibility issue.
Next:
- Each student uploads a photo to the activity Google Drive folder.
- I make a slideshow of all submissions.
- Class time is set aside to review the submissions/slideshow.
- Each student has 90 seconds to speak to their image.
- Any instances where we are able to effect change are discussed further (steps to address, by whom, etc.).
Through classroom discussion, we create space for solutions to be identified and possible action to be taken. It can be a very powerful session with students sharing their heightened awareness of their surroundings. If on-campus issues have been identified, we discuss as a group possible solutions, thanks to whole class feedback.*
On campus results: If the students capture problematic areas on campus, I make note of these to forward them to Physical Plant to help them implement solutions.
* If this does not cause harm to a learner for coming forward.
Feedback from Learners
“My view on many things changed after taking this course. I pay close attention to accessibility in public places, I do my best to not treat others differently, and the view that people with disabilities can’t do the same things as me no longer exists in my head.”
“This course was more interesting than I initially thought it would be. It was very eye-opening and made me realize a lot about society and the world in general that I wasn’t necessarily aware of otherwise. I thought it was the type of information that, unless you know someone who has a disability, you never really need to think about it but Taryn and these activities made me change my mind.”
A Short Task to Challenge You!
Lets try a quick seek-to-identify activity. Can you spot 3 access issues in the following images? Once you find the spot, click on it to learn more.
One Final Task
Is this something you can use in your classroom? How might you utilize it? If you share your results somewhere on social media, share a link to this lesson for context.