Disability and Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

According to official statistical data, people with disabilities are underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) occupations and students with disabilities are underrepresented in STEM degree courses. This chapter surveys official reports produced by British and American authorities, as well as a number of media sources, in order to substantiate this claim. The authors' aim is to uncover the reasons behind disabled students being underrepresented in STEM courses and to sketch the vision for the future of disabled young people who may be interested in perusing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Teacher Attitudes Towards the School Integration of Students With Special Educational Needs

In recent decades, the issue of integrating students with SEN in mainstream education has been the focus of both educationalists and teachers from Romania. In this respect, integrated education means the form of schooling in which students with SEN are taught in mainstream education, while inclusive education assumes that schools adjust themselves to the psycho-individual particularities of each student, whether or not they have certain disabilities. Unfortunately, teachers and other educational agents are not always prepared to accept and meet the needs of a student with disabilities. Thus, the aim of this research was to identify the attitude of teachers towards the integration of students with SEN in the mainstream education of Bihor county, Romania. The results show that both society and a large part of the school staff ignore the issue of people with disabilities, preferring a superficial involvement, which restricts itself mainly to the administrative aspect instead of developing quality interpersonal relationships between non-disabled students and those with SEN.

All Together Now

A common problem for people with disabilities, particularly those who rely on mobility devices, is learning to navigate a new environment. This is especially troublesome for students who are attending a new university and need to figure out how to get from one place to another. All Together Now is a mobile multi-player cooperative game developed for two purposes. First, the game, developed by two computer scientists and a disability studies scholar, is intended to give disabled students a fun way to learn their way around campus, learn how to report accessibility issues on that campus, and make friends with people who have similar disabilities. Second, the game can be used as a way of fostering awareness and advocacy among students without disabilities, by having them work in teams where one member is someone with a disability that causes them to rely on mobility devices. This article describes the implementation of the game within a disability studies course and the results of two pilot tests, with both disabled and non-disabled participants.

Project-Based Learning for Students With Intellectual Disabilities

With the push to include all students, despite disability, in the general education classroom, general education teachers need to be trained in ways to adequately educate intellectually disabled students alongside their nondisabled peers. Many students with an intellectual disability are capable of learning in an inclusive environment if provided with proper support, such as through instructional methods like project-based learning. Project-based learning actively involves learners in investigating real-world issues and answering related questions. This chapter focuses on how to use the project-based learning method to teach children with intellectual disabilities within the framework of inclusive education, using biology as an example subject area.

Satisfaction of visually disabled users with California educational websites

BACKGROUND: College and university websites in the United States are legally required to meet accessibility standards to promote equal opportunity in education for blind and visually disabled students. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are the recognized standard for website accessibility. OBJECTIVE: Determine how satisfied blind and visually disabled college and university students are with college and university websites in California, and whether compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is a good predictor of that satisfaction. METHODS: A random sample of websites from California colleges and universities was evaluated for accessibility compliance. A stratified sample of six websites was taken from the initial sample. Thirty blind or visually disabled students performed a prescribed series of tasks on each of the six websites, then answered a Likert-format survey regarding their satisfaction with each website. RESULTS: Sixty-three percent of websites did not meet the first priority accessibility criteria. Participant responses showed a majority were satisfied with websites, both compliant and non-compliant, and a strong correlation between satisfaction and accessibility compliance. CONCLUSIONS: Despite legal requirements, a majority or large minority of college and university websites in California do not meet accessibility guidelines, indicating a significant opportunity to improve the accessibility of those websites.

“We Kind of do not Dare to Tell Everybody that we are in a Program for Disabled Students, Because Some are Afraid that they will be Made Fun of.”

Implementing inclusive education has proven problematic all over the world. The reasons are multiple, but one of them can presumably be related to the way students with disabilities are “created”, viewed, and responded to as “special education students” within schools. To challenge this, we need to understand students’ position within the school. In this article, the focus is on identifying the position of students who receive special education in schools in Iceland by mapping their power relations and resistance within the discursive norm of special education. We use the method of thinking with theory and read data in accordance with Foucault’s theories of power relations and resistance and Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of line of flight and becoming. Findings show that power relations affect students variously and although students’ resistance is manifested differently between individuals, a common thread is visible when resisting their static position as special education students.

Pedagogical Conditions Aimed to Involve the Blind and Visually Impaired Students into School Extracurricular Activities

The basic problem of the visually impaired students’ integration into different spheres of public life through educational practices is considered in this scientific article. The purpose of the work is designing of specially organized pedagogical conditions for disabled students’ involvement into extracurricular activities. Key issues of the maintain of the school extracurricular activities are identified, basic examples of school activities in the frame of Federal State Educational Standards are presented. Special pedagogical conditions are usually identified after having studied the students’ readiness for creative activity, their participation in the school events, after having penetrated into the students’ problems and preferences. The article involves results of the research held on a bias of Grot boarding school. 215 students of the 5th–12th grades participated. These special conditions should help to the involvement of the disabled students into educational process, the main goal of which is upbringing of a harmoniously developed and socially responsible person. A set of the best pedagogical conditions is proposed in the article. The development of mixed aged communities at school and providing pedagogical assistance in their productive work is analyzed. The content of the school community activities is often connected with the solution of the participants’ personally important problems. There’s sense in the students’ being involved into working out and discussing a plan of extracurricular activities, it’s vitally important to support and initiate their ideas. It’s necessary to make a spectrum of different methods of education work wider and to involve students to design them. Development of the teachers’ professional competence and building relationships with the students on a bias of human values are urgent for the successful solution of educators’ tasks. The article concludes that the proposed set of pedagogical conditions will contribute to the successful socialization of schoolchildren and the development of their life competencies.

Pengaruh Permainan Mobile Edukasi Terhadap Proses Pembelajaran Berhitung Anak Tunagrahita Ringan

The difficulty of learning to count for Mentally Disabled Students (MDS) is not only because their intelligence is below the average of regular students and difficult to concentrate, but also because the material presented is less exciting and theoretical. The purpose of this study was to see the effect of the snake and ladder mobile game on the ability and speed of counting mentally disabled students in the process of count-learning. Data collection techniques in this study were interviews with teachers, User Accepted Test (UAT) questionnaires for measuring games, and research instruments in the form of summation essay questions. The research method used is an experiment with a one-group pre-test and post-test. The research subjects are four mentally disabled students at Pelita Hati Special School (SLB PH). Data analysis compares the score acquisition, the time it takes students to work on the questions during the pre-test and post-test, and UAT data analysis. The Results showed that this game made MDS interested in count-learning, improving learning outcomes, and increasing students' speed in learning counting at SLB PH compared with before playing this educational-game. Thus, the snake and ladder educational mobile game positively influences the count learning process of MDS.

ТРАНСДИСЦИПЛИНАРНОЕ МОДЕЛИРОВАНИЕ КАК КОРРЕКЦИОННО-РАЗВИВАЮЩАЯ СТРАТЕГИЯ В УСЛОВИЯХ ИНКЛЮЗИИ

Life in increasingly digitalised society demands high levels of education from contemporary man. To meet that demand, inclusive education has to come up with new strategies. Solutions can be found in a interdisciplinary approach to education. On this basis, the use of modelling with elementary mathematics as a way of integrating diverse academic subjects in the school curriculum is being developed. New interdisciplinary educational technologies are created and their applicability and effect on both students with and without learning disabilities are tested. The experiments are carried out in a standard learning environment with the participation of disabled students. The paper presents the results and, finally, conclusions are drawn.