please use only the attachments as reference and cite within the assignment
1. What is self-advocacy and what is the history behond the movement? Who contributed to the movement and how? 2. What is self-advocacy according to Kimball? According to Caldwell? According to Traustadottir? 3. How has the definition of self-advocacy changed throughout disability history? Why? 4. What is the relationship between self-advocacy and disability history? 5. How can self-advocacy assist in reshaping the way disability history is discussed and taught? College Students With Disabilities Redefine Activism: Self-Advocacy, Storytelling, and Collective Action Ezekiel W. Kimball University of Massachusetts Amherst Adam Moore and Annemarie Vaccaro University of Rhode Island Peter F. Troiano Central Connecticut State University Barbara M. Newman University of Rhode Island Despite rapid growth in the numbers of students with disabilities enrolling in higher education, there is limited research about their experiences in colleges and universities, and information about their collegiate activism is even more limited. Through a constructivist grounded theory study of 59 college students and recent graduates, we demonstrate the connection between activism and purpose in the lives of students with disabilities. Our findings suggest advocacy skills and activist tendencies were social- ized early in life by parental role models. College students with disabilities drew upon foundational self-advocacy skills to engage in a variety of forms of disability activism during college including doing, role modeling, and teaching self-advocacy; reducing stigma through education and storytelling; and collective action. College students also engaged in activism on issues other than disability. Narratives from students with disabilities demonstrate a need to rethink traditional notions of activism in order to develop broader and more accurate definitions of college activism. Keywords: disability, activism, self-advocacy, stigma, identity The number of students with disabilities at- tending higher education institutions is growing rapidly—both in terms of raw numbers and as a percentage of overall enrollments (Snyder & Dillow, 2013). Nonetheless, we know compar- atively little about their actual campus experi- ences (Kimball, Wells, Ostiguy, Manly, & Lauterbach, 2016; Peña, 2014). The limited in- formation that we do have, however, suggests that students with disabilities may experience a chilly climate (e.g., stereotypes, assumptions, exclusion) in higher education (e.g., Cress & Ikeda, 2003; Elliott, Gonzalez, & Larsen, 2011; Marshak, Van Wieren, Ferrell, Swiss, & Dugan, 2010). The end result is that students with dis- abilities face conditions that might serve as an incentive for activism. Yet, very few scholars have studied activism among college students with disabilities. The lack of attention to the collegiate activ- ism of persons with disabilities has profound implications for scholarship and practice. For example, the experiences of people with disabil- ities are often not included in broader historical treatments of student activism (e.g., Boren, 2001; Degroot, 1998; Feuer, 1969). Yet, it is clear that disability activism has a long history (e.g., Baynton, 1996; Davis, 2015; Edwards, 2012). Equally problematic, even these histories of disability activism often understate, or do not acknowledge, the role of college students in the development of legislation designed to protect the civil rights of students with disabilities (e.g., Davis, 2015; Schweik, 2009; Scotch, 2001). Ezekiel W. Kimball, Department of Educational Policy, Research, & Administration, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Adam Moore, Special Education, University of Rhode Island; Annemarie Vaccaro, Department of Human Development & Family Studies, University of Rhode Is- land; Peter F. Troiano, Counselor Education and Family Therapy, Central Connecticut State University; Barbara M. Newman, Department of Human Development & Family Studies, University of Rhode Island. Correspondence concerning this article should be ad- dressed to Ezekiel W. Kimball, Department of Educational Policy, Research, & Administration, University of Massa- chusetts Amherst, 252 Hills South, Amherst, MA 01003. E-mail:
[email protected] T hi s do cu m en t is co py ri gh te d by th e A m er ic an Ps yc ho lo gi ca l A ss oc ia tio n or on e of its al lie d pu bl is he rs . T hi s ar tic le is in te nd ed so le ly fo r th e pe rs on al us e of th e in di vi du al us er an d is no t to be di ss em in at ed br oa dl y. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education © 2016 National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education 2016, Vol. 9, No. 3, 245–260 1938-8926/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000031 245 mailto:
[email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000031 This invisibility may contribute to the misim- pression among faculty and staff members that students with disabilities are not engaged in contemporary activism, which may in turn alter their behavior toward students with disabilities and student activists (Bensimon, 2007). It may also prevent students with disabilities from rec- ognizing that their current activism stems from and contributes to the historical climate for di- versity on college campuses (Hurtado et al., 2012). More information about the activism of students with disabilities is required to guard against these potentially deleterious effects. In this article, we share results from a con- structivist grounded theory study of 59 college students and recent graduates with disabilities. The original focus of the study from which these observations are drawn was to explore the sense of purpose among college students with disabilities. Given the limited research on the relationship of disabilities to psychosocial de- velopment in adolescence and early adulthood, we approached this work by encouraging stu- dents to give their own definition of disability, to explain the meanings they associated with their disabilities, and to describe the ways these disabilities figured into important life decisions, especially decisions about where to go to col- lege, what to study, career aspirations, plans for after college, and long-term life goals. Drawing on the work of Damon and col- leagues (Damon, Menon, & Bronk, 2003; Da- mon, 2008), we think of purpose as a higher- order goal that gives direction and meaning to life. Damon et al. (2003) defined the construct: “Purpose is a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at once meaning- ful to the self and of consequence to the world beyond-the-self” (p. 121). Building on this def- inition, we hoped to discover students’ inten- tions about their goals, what steps they were taking to achieve their goals, and what if any motivations guided them to want to connect their efforts to the betterment of others (Malin, Reilly, Quinn, & Moran, 2014). Embedded in this definition is an implied potential path to- ward activism, sometimes referred to in the literature as civic purpose (Malin, Ballard, & Damon, 2015). Our assumption is that the sense of purpose matures over the period of early and later adolescence, as young people think about what matters to them, what they care about, and what they hope to achieve in the near and dis- tant future. We hoped to gain a greater under- standing of whether and how students’ experi- ences with their disabilities influence their sense of purpose. From our analysis emerged impor- tant themes regarding disability activism. Literature Review High-quality empirical literature on students with disabilities is limited (Kimball, Wells, Os- tiguy, Manly, & Lauterbach, 2016; Peña, 2014). Therefore, we made use of a variety of bodies of literature to craft this article—some focused specifically on disability, others on activism, and still others the broader experience of col- lege students. In this section, we specifically discuss key research linking purpose and activ- ism, review competing definitions of activism, and explore connections between identity de- velopment, activism and advocacy among stu- dents with disabilities. Developing Purpose, Doing Activism A sense of purpose includes a desire to achieve goals that contribute to others or to make a difference in society (Damon et al., 2003; Damon, 2008). The definition of pur- pose—to accomplish “something that is at once meaningful to the self and of consequence to the world beyond-the-self” (Damon, p. 121)—can also be viewed as a descriptor for activism. Indeed, some scholars have connected youth activism and purpose by using the term civic purpose which is “a sustained intention to con- tribute to the world beyond the self through civic or political action” (Malin, Ballard, & Damon, 2015, p. 109). In their study of high school seniors, Malin and colleagues explicated how participants ar- ticulated varying levels of civic purpose. They operationalized civic purpose as a clear desire to be involved in a meaningful civic activity; en- gagement in the activity; and motivation to have an impact beyond the self through the activity. Some students had an intention to contribute but had not actively engaged or they were active but without a clear sense of how it related to a future sense of purpose. These results support the idea that an emerging capacity for activism in high school is rooted in a developing sense of purpose. Developing civic purpose in high 246 KIMBALL, MOORE, VACCARO, TROIANO, AND NEWMAN T hi s do cu m en t is co py ri gh te d by th e A m er ic an Ps yc ho lo gi ca l A ss oc ia tio n or on e of its al lie d pu bl is he rs . T hi s ar tic le is in te nd ed so le ly fo r th e pe rs on al us e of th e in di vi du al us er an d is no t to be di ss em in at ed br oa dl y. school may serve as a precursor to collegiate activism. Routes to civic activism among college stu- dents may differ depending on opportunities, encouragement, and role models for active en- gagement (Kahne & Middaugh, 2009). Ballard, Malin, Porter, Colby, and Damon (2015) inves- tigated motivations for civic participation among ethnic minority and immigrant youth. This study addressed the possibility that expe- riences of inclusion or exclusion might influ- ence the motivation for civic activism (Lopez & Marcelo, 2008; Sánchez-Jankowski, 2002). Four motives for civic activism were identified: helping identity (e.g., I’m the kind of person who helps others); instrumental motives (e.g., to further my education); personal issues (e.g., to do something about an issue I care about); and weak motivation (e.g., it sounded like fun). Youth in both political and nonpolitical types of civic engagement were equally likely to be mo- tivated by personal experiences and their devel- oping sense of purpose. Students who were po- litically active were more likely to agree that they were upset by something they saw happen- ing and wanted to take action to express their beliefs. This study did not include students with