What I Wish My Instructor Knew: How Active Learning Influences the Classroom Experiences and Self-Advocacy of STEM Majors with ADHD and Specific Learning Disabilities.

Our understanding of how active learning affects different groups of students is still developing. One group often overlooked in higher education research is students with disabilities. Two of the most commonly occurring disabilities on college campuses are attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and specific learning disorders (SLD). We investigated how the incorporation of active-learning practices influences the learning and self-advocacy experiences of students with ADHD and/or SLD (ADHD/SLD) in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 25 STEM majors with ADHD/SLD registered with a campus disability resource center at a single university, and data were analyzed using qualitative methods. Participants described how they perceived active learning in their STEM courses to support or hinder their learning and how active learning affected their self-advocacy. Many of the active-learning barriers could be attributed to issues related to fidelity of implementation of a particular active-learning strategy and limited awareness of universal design for learning. Active learning was also reported to influence self-advocacy for some participants, and examples of self-advocacy in active-learning STEM courses were identified. Defining the supports and barriers perceived by students with ADHD/SLD is a crucial first step in developing more-inclusive active-learning STEM courses. Suggestions for research and teaching are provided.

Inside and Out: Factors That Support and Hinder the Self-Advocacy of Undergraduates with ADHD and/or Specific Learning Disabilities in STEM.

Self-advocacy is linked to the success and retention of students with disabilities in college. Self-advocacy is defined as communicating individual wants, needs, and rights to determine and pursue required accommodations. While self-advocacy is linked to academic success, little is known about how students with disabilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) practice self-advocacy. We previously developed a model of self-advocacy for STEM students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and/or specific learning disabilities (SLD). Here, we use this model to examine what factors support or hinder self-advocacy in undergraduate STEM courses. We conducted semistructured interviews with 25 STEM majors with ADHD and/or SLD and used qualitative approaches to analyze our data. We found internal factors, or factors within a participant, and external factors, the situations and people, described by our participants, that influenced self-advocacy. These factors often interacted and functioned as a support or barrier, depending on the individuals and their unique experiences. We developed a model to understand how factors supported or hindered self-advocacy in STEM. Supporting factors contributed to a sense of comfort and security for our participants and informed their perceptions that accommodation use was accepted in a STEM course. We share implications for research and teaching based on our results.