Harnessing Dis-Ability

Networks Issue 19, March 2016 85

Harnessing DisAbility

Zrinka Mendas ([email protected]) formerly of the Lord Ashcroft International Business School

Abstract

Disabled lecturers at Anglia Ruskin University participated in the study ‘Harnessing DisAbility’ that explored how they manage their learning and teaching and engage students (disabled and non-

disabled) in the process. The nature of study was exploratory and ethnographic. Data was collected from the lecturers on both campuses (i.e. Cambridge and Chelmsford) and include lecturer notes, video and audio recordings of the classroom lectures and individual and group interviews. The study has identified three major foci: Space, Communication and Career Development. All three significantly impact on the performance of disabled lecturers. Results show that disabled lecturers have adapted by developing their own specific capabilities in order to cope with the demands of teaching and learning. However, this means undertaking additional, unpaid work in their own time that alongside with the lack of the information often results in creating a stressful and working environment instead of a supportive one. The study concludes that disabled lecturers should be provided with a more supportive working environment through robust planning for better tailored management support as well as access to information that will, in turn, enable disabled lecturers to achieve their career aspirations and satisfaction at workplace.

Keywords

Disability, Teaching, Ethnography

86 Networks Issue 19, March 2016

Introduction

The theme of the study, Harnessing DisAbility, emerged during the author’s Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (PG Cert) training in 2014. There has been limited research undertaken at the time by Anglia Ruskin University which has addressed the issues facing disabled lecturers when managing their learning and teaching and engage students (disabled and non-disabled) in the process.

Aim

This project aims to improve the understanding of how disability can affect disabled lecturers in a teaching and learning classroom environment and engage the students in the process. During the study, four key research foci have emerged:

1. Involving other disabled Anglia Ruskin lecturers in the project – therefore promoting a wider impact and engagement

2. Including students into the process to inform a disabled lecturer’s own inclusive teaching and learning practices

3. Investigating a method of supporting learning by applying inclusive practices through innovative methods

4. Developing a staff training method which could be used as virtual resources within the VLE for the in-class, distance and part-time learners and ensuring effective approaches are preserved for the future reference for lecturers, sessions and workshops

These foci provide a structure for this paper.

Literature Review

In the current higher education environment little attention is paid to problems facing disabled lecturers and the best practices associated with it. This is particularly evident within the Higher Education Agency (HEA) research that is predominantly focused on disabled students’ needs. A comprehensive review of the literature related to disabled students can be found in Rickinson (2010), ranging from developing curriculum for disabled students (Adams & Brown, 2006), managing disability (Goode, 2007) to positive action (QAA, 2012) and so on. The issues facing disabled lecturers are usually resolved within their Human Resource Management departments. This study addresses how disability issues could be addressed differently, by looking at the structural problems facing disabled lecturers in teaching and career development.

The project builds on the work of Vygotsky (1978) who was particularly interested in the study of cognitive functions of deaf, profoundly deaf and blind children and adults. Vygotsky noted, ‘...in the social world, however, deafness is a more severe handicap because it prevents mastering of speech, blocks verbal communication, and bars entry to the world of culture, therefore it disrupts a person’s social connections in a more substantial way than blindness...’ (1983, p. 77). He developed the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development which suggests that human potential is theoretically limitless, but the practical limits of human potential depend upon the quality of social interactions and residential environment. He demonstrated that other forms of cognitive growth compensate for disruption through the development of skills representing higher mental functions, such as abstract reasoning, logical memory, voluntary attention, or goal-directed behaviour. I refer to these capabilities as bounded capabilities (Mendas, 2010). Of particular interest is how these capabilities are developed by disabled lecturers in a higher education environment. Disabled lecturers need more time to prepare their lecturers, require dedicated specialist support, a differentiated curriculum, and special technological auxiliary aids. The question then becomes how these demands can be met in a regular classroom environment (Gindis, 1995). ‘Harnessing DisAbility’ is directed at enriching our understanding of ‘compensation’ in Vygotsky’s sense; how disabled lecturers manage their disabilities in their teaching and engage students in the process.

I am also interested in how these bounded capabilities affect the career development of disabled lecturers in higher education. Margaret Archer’s trilogy, including Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation


(2003), Making our way through the World: Human Reflectivity and Social Mobility (2007), and The Reflective Imperative in Late Modernity (2012), provide an interesting insight into four modes of reflectivity – communicative, autonomous, meta-reflectivity, and fractured reflectivity. According to Archer (2007), the first step in establishing a mode of reflectivity includes an internal conversation that we hold with ourselves. I applied this approach to our study and established an internal conversation with the participants through one-to-one and group interviews. I used my own experience of being a deaf researcher, to reflect on the practices, situations, and problems and share them with others. Being a reflective practitioner is essential to research, as Schön (1983) argues, professionals need to reflect on their learning by developing reflective practices that involve considering one’s own experiences when applying the knowledge in practice.

A lack of content in the literature suggests that disabled lecturers remain silent witnesses. Many disabled lecturers choose not to declare their disability and even if they do, they know that they will not receive much needed support. In turn, their career development remains undermined. This is a holistic rationale of this study – to encourage thinking differently about disabled lecturers, to get ‘a feel for the situation’ from the perspective of disabled lecturer and become motivated to help disabled academic colleagues achieve their professional goals and state of a meta-reflectivity (Archer, 2012) and a greater social mobility (Archer, 2007).

Demographics

Table 1 shows some of the demographics of the participants in this study.

Table 1: Demographics of the Participants

The first group included six staff participants with a range of disabilities and who responded to a call for participation. The second includes students that undertook large size modules at their faculties.

Table 2 provides a brief overview of disability types from the staff members’ own descriptions.

Staff

Department Number Course / Module (Large modules)

Number

Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education (FHSCE)

3 Biological Sciences 100

Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Science (ALSS): Department of English, Communication, Film and Media

1 English Literature 100

Supporting services (including Learning Technologists, Librarians, and other technical staff)

1 Various

Lord Ashcroft International Business School (LAIBS)

1

Accounting and Finance, Business Research Methods, Business Analytics

300

Students



Table 2: Demographics of staff disabilities

The project was integrated into timetabled module delivery and treated as any teaching exercise for the purpose for staff development. Students were informed about the purpose of this project.

Ethnography in the Classroom

Ethnographic studies range from traditional scientific field studies to organisational (Van Maanen, 2007; Prasad, 2005), virtual (Hine, 2000), Internet (Marham, 1998), and netnography (Kozinets, 2002). Ethnography is also applied in classroom and higher education environment. While the classic approach tends to focus on the specific social process within the chosen community, overlooking the context within that community more generally (Bryman et al., 2011), modern ethnographical studies try to avoid this problem by drawing upon mixed methods (Agar, 1996) to investigate and make sense of the meanings within the empirical context. Depending on the context they explore, these range from: a portrait of a people (Harris & Johnson, 2000), the art and science of describing a group or culture (Fetterman, 1998), the story (Hammersley, 1995), and others.

Department Disability type Characteristics (in the words of the participants)

FHSCE Dyslexia and visual impairment (Irlen Syndrome)

Participant 1: I have Irlen Syndrome and visual dyslexia, also known as Scotopic Sensitivity. I wear tinted glasses to help me seeing clearly. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that the Irlen Syndrome was diagnosed. And then not until I was writing up my PhD that they identified the fact that ‘did you know you got dyslexia?’ Participant 2: I knew I had dyslexia but I didn’t do anything about it so I suppose you could say that’s my fault. But now I’ve got it, and I’ve got all that in place they seem to think that that’s done now and it’s all going to go away. Well no, actually it’s exactly the same I’m just now dealing with it in a different way. Participant 3: I am severely dyslexic and I am entirely disabled in my ability to spell and punctuate written work correctly. I have to wait for lifts – I am unsafe on stairs. I have poor balance (dyspraxia) and poor eye-sight (scotopic sensitivity syndrome). I have information processing problems in my brain and I have memory problems. The connections of my brain cells do not always work, so intermittently they will not connect to one another, as they should, without any conscious effort, and instead I have to concentrate hard to consciously make the connection happen. This effort is exhausting!

ALSS Dyslexia and hearing impairment

Participant 4: I am mildly, but multiply disabled, I have no directional hearing, I am mildly dyslexic and possibly a little bit of Asperger’s. I still remember being presented with a wedge of material, that thick, and being told to check figures in half an hour. I just looked at him and said ‘if you’d given them to me yesterday, and given me some time, no problem. I’m quite good at maths, but I cannot just sit down and look at it. It had never crossed their mind that an academic might be dyslexic, because it just doesn’t.

Support Services

Partial blindness and reduced mobility

Participant 5: I lost my sight after I left school. I was in a very comfortable position working as an engineer and it was only when I lost my sight that I couldn’t do that anymore. I can’t see them (people). Basically what happens is, my PA when we go into the room. He’ll say, ‘Right, your back is towards the back of the front of the class where the board is and the room goes back about 30 feet and it’s 15 feet wide. You’ve got two rows of desksK’

LAIBS Deafness (a cochlear implant user) and speech impairment

Participant 6: I was a profoundly deaf since the age of 10 and by 40 I was completely deaf. I also have a speech impairment that can make me mumble when I get upset. My cognitive processing is also affected and people get impression that I jump from one topic to another when in fact I struggle with the conversation. My brain works very hard to recognise the sounds and make sense of the words. Listening is very tiring, especially in the large rooms where I can hear but I cannot understand what people say behind my back.


The power relationship between researcher and participants is determined by the researcher (Foucault, 1983) who can choose between being a marginal native, professional stranger, going native, or maintaining some distance (Tedlock, 2001). In this project I have a dual role, being both researcher and participant. I am engaged in reflective practices and adopt a similar approach to that of auto-ethnography (Ettorre, 2010) – a study of culture (being disabled) that involves the self, where the researcher builds research by looking at her emotional recall and feeling and sociological introspection of the situation with the help of transcriptions of narratives and reflective research notes.

In this study, I was interested in the following: how to observe and capture participants at their workplace, classroom teaching, without disrupting them, and how to do this in the most authentic way.

Data collection process I experimented with methods of data collection and, in consultation with the staff members, we agreed to video record their lectures. They were interested in observing their own behaviour and this acted as a catalyst for adopting an ethnography in the classroom.

Data was collected on both campuses (i.e. Cambridge and Chelmsford) and included: lecturers’ notes, video and audio recordings of the lectures, one-to-one interviews, and a focus group interview. All video data was transcribed and shared with the participants in various formats to accommodate their disability.

I observed the process of the regular classroom, student group or individual activities, using video recording analysis. I created a log book, consisting of diaries and e-mail records written by the staff participants and containing personal experiences, and a portfolio of the sessions carried out, session plans and group activities. This was used as a reflective tool to record how well the chosen methods or approaches can be adapted to aid inclusive teaching and assessment.

All participants, both students and staff, completed a survey about the usefulness of group work delivered by disabled lecturers. This was done during the workshop run by the PG Cert programme module leader. Feedback given to the participants gave them an opportunity to discuss the interaction between disabled lecturer and students and the issues arising from teaching in large and small groups. This was explored with the focus group meeting with all participants.

Due to a tight timeframe and volume of teaching in the first semester and staff members’ disabilities, I had to consider their wellbeing. It was important not to put additional pressure on them during the study. I carried out an induction meeting with each of the staff participants in order to prepare them for the participation and exercised a great flexibility in arranging a video recording of participants’ lecturers or sessions.

The Tracing the Impact Framework

Data collection formed part of the Tracing the Impact framework (third research focus) that I developed and which summarises an entire research process, from data collection to the data analysis stage of the project (see Figure 1):

Figure 1: Tracing the Impact



The Tracing the Impact framework provides a practical methodological guidance for future investigations into the awareness of disability in institutional and cross-institutional settings. It is useful in preparing research bids that require partnership with other institutions as it demonstrates how the potential impact could be achieved across the institution, e.g. when planning for awareness building training programme.

Furthermore, in the light of cuts to the Disabled Students Allowance (DSA) in 2016, a challenge that institutions should be addressing is how to make teaching more inclusive. One of the ways of addressing this is to engage staff in meaningful debate. Findings from the workshop suggests that the Tracing the Impact framework is an effective way of exploring the idea of engaging students, learning developers and disabled lecturers in the process. I also identified a potential supportive role of learning developers in a dialogue of addressing the disability and promoting tolerance of disability, by empowering students to take action and help lecturer in the process, so to enhance student experience. In this way, they have become an important stakeholder group in the project.

Findings

This section addresses the second research focus. The study has identified three major features: Space, Communication, and Career Development. All three significantly impact on the performance of disabled lecturers.

Space

Organising the work space, e.g. lectures rooms, remains a significant challenge for disabled lecturers and students alike. Participants’ comments included:

What I find really difficult is that we have got all this in place for the students. They can go to the services, they can find out if they’ve got dyslexia and they can find out what’s available to them. But there is no central point for staff to go to for any of their disabilities, what they might have and what is available to them to help them do their job. I looked on my.anglia [i.e. staff intranet] and I went through everything. So I think the disability services need to be open to staff as well, and need to advertise that they are open to staff. So you can go there in confidence and say ‘look, I have an issue: hearing, sight... What can have that will make it easier?’ because this is not going to make it a lot easier for marking because my writing is appalling (Participant 1)

I need my environment set up properly otherwise I just go into panic. So I must know the space, I walk around the space so I have to make sure that everything [and I do this] over and over and over, is set up. No surprises, if I’m surprised, I just go into melt downK It’s not just the technical side of things, the PowerPoint and that kind of thing. It’s arranging the middle of the classroom to suit me, I like to walk around it so I need a space where I can walk around and if that isn’t happening then it needs to move and the students need to be aware that I move around (Participant 2)

Learning to manipulate your space, I think it’s one of the most important things, and educating people about that sense of space. So, I don’t use small group teaching. For me the room is the problem. A small group in a large room and I can’t hear, and a room with too much glass (Participant 4)

If I have tables like that I can’t get round and I get really frustrated. It’s a safety issue as well. I get so many bruises around my upper legs because I have to move around the students group and current table arrangement makes this very unpleasant teaching experience. We don’t get very much support here they don’t understand when we ask for a room that has a particular arrangement of the tables. I tried for two years and gave up (Participant 6)

Space remains an important issue for all participants. A poorly planned and/or inadequate work space may affect their already slowed cognitive processing, resulting in emotional distress that in turn affects their teaching performance. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that disabled lecturers’ needs are assessed and that they are consulted in advance to provide them with a teaching space that enables them to carry out their classroom teaching. This issue should be considered as a reasonable adjustment that the university makes, especially when planning timetabling, and its commitment to implement equality and diversity both at Anglia Ruskin (ARU, 2010a; 2010b) and more broadly.


Communication Communicating with students or with other staff members is often difficult for disabled lecturers. Staff members' comments included:

I think [disclosure is] dangerous as well, especially with new students because they think ‘oh, I’ve got a dyslexic tutor’ and I think some of them think that makes us thick or unable to teach. And I think they’ve got to understand that there is differences and you are going to be off the wall sometimes. I mean sometimes an idea pops into my head and it just comes out (Participant 2)

At one point in the morning lesson, when my mind completely blanked in front of these new students, I apologise and disclosed to the new students that I am dyslexic and dyspraxic and that I have problems with my eyes. They look puzzled. I say that I have problems with memory and recognition and processing information and that I have poor balance and walk into things and fall over a lot. They look worried; I tell them I am fine, that I’ve had it since I was born and that I have many coping mechanisms so it doesn’t cause me too many problems. They look OK with this. We move on (Participant 4)

I like to walk around as I’m teaching, however I’m aware that causes problems because I know I’ve got a certain amount of space but, my PowerPoint might be up on the wall and believe me I hate using PowerPoints because PowerPoints are no good to blind people whatsoever. Because a lecturer will stand at the front and say ‘Oh, look at this over here’, well I haven’t got a clue what over here means. You’ve got to, for a blind person, you have to describe. Now I might walk in front so they can’t see. You know, it’s difficult. What I try and do is I try and involve people so the first thing I will do is I will sayK ‘Right, I walk in and say ‘right okay, my name is... I just introduce myself okay? What I want you to do is get into groups of two and I want you to define disability, I’ll give you five minutes. After this I will say ‘I want a volunteer, come down the front, if somebody doesn’t volunteer then I will pick somebody’, it’s the fear factor (Participant 5)

I had 25 students in my class yesterday last week and one of them so sat far away and I couldn’t hear [him]. And he said ‘can I ask you a question’ and I couldn’t hear, it was long distance because I couldn’t get there because of the table arrangement. The students in the middle turned around and said ‘oh, she means that that that’, I said thank you. Some of them seems to be reacting positive, protective, and I said ‘thank you very much’ and then I remember saying ‘help me to help you. I need your help as well because you see, I can’t manage all of you at the same time and I can’t answer questions at the same time. So you have to raise your hand, speak in turn, give me time to get on, otherwise I can’t organise my answer (Participant 6)

On the whole the participants have already taken the ‘champion’ role, becoming key drivers for changing the student perceptions about disability and promoting equality and diversity at the front line, where the prejudices about disability are visible and could be dealt with.

Career development Career development planning remains an ongoing issue for disabled lecturers. Participants’ comments included:

I already start my marking at 3.30pm and finish at 7pm each day that I mark (non-stop). I am 30% slower at reading than the average adult and slower at understanding what I have read than the average adult and I am 30% slower at organising my thoughts into writing than the average adult. NB it is not a question of blanket scores for these functions – it just so happens that my diagnostic test results were each a match at 30%. Note that I am measured against the average adult and not against other academics. My margin of disadvantage will be higher when measured against high achievers. So, is it a reasonable adjustment for me to have 30% less marking than lecturers without dyslexia? Well, I would have thought but I have never asked for this as I like to cope with the same workload as everyone else, but hang on a minute! I will have 47% more marking than some lecturers without dyslexia! I ask myself, can I rise to this level of capability? (Participant 3)

I have not ever had any careers advice or structured input into career management. The only help I have ever received was from Job Centre Plus. This consisted of an assessor visiting me in my new workplace and asking me pre-determined questions and a written report recommending various gadgetry be purchased for me by the University and reclaimed via the systems provided. The



University staff failed to order the equipment and therein ensued a horrible year of my efforts trying to attain this. I was unsupported in this process by University management staff, HR and by Job Centre Plus. I pursued and attained most of it. So, to be clear, equipment that was meant to be supplied to enable me in my job function was not supplied as it should have been and throughout my efforts I was unable to find any member of staff who was remotely interested in engaging with the supply of it! (Participant 3)

So that’s the way I teach, but I can’t teach that I can only teach that to training social workers. I want to teach that to education students, I want to teach that to nurses, I want to teach that to lecturers. But I can’t because I haven’t got a PhD and I haven’t got a PhD because I’m disabled, but I am struggling because I’m not given the time to do it in work (Participant 5)

I do not ask for sympathy. There is nothing to prove at work. I am just left out. Despite the things I do, whatever I could possibly do, given my circumstances, my disability, nothing that I have done is appreciated. This makes you feel grossly undervalued and damages your career developmentK and with no interest in helping you develop it, there is no option but to leave (Participant 6)

Participants are concerned with their career development. Disabled lecturers try to compensate for the lack of certain skills and adapt by developing their capabilities in order to cope with the demands of teaching and learning (Vygotsky, 1978). Yet, this often means undertaking additional, unpaid work in their own time that alongside a lack of information, often results in creating a stressful and working environment – a state of fractured reflectivity that is characterised with intensified personal distress and disorientation that results in expressive action (Archer, 2012), which in turn might have negative impact on person’s position and development in the organisation.

Disabled lecturers, like their non-disabled peers, have a legal right to a structured and sound career development with opportunities for advancement available to them if they wish to take them on (Equality Act 2010). Taking a legal approach should be the last resort, as institutions and staff members should work toward creating an atmosphere of voluntary commitment and engagement. Communication is a key aspect of this process. Indeed, institutions and staff members need to move away from ‘you cannot do it’ to a ‘how can we maximise on a specific set of capabilities?’ attitude to help tackle disability issues more generally. In doing so, disabled lecturers should be rewarded with a sound career development plan that recognises their skills, therefore, the focus should be on building their bounded capabilities (Mendas, 2010). This would enable them to move on from the state of fractured reflectivity to meta-reflectivity (Archer, 2012) – when internal conversation results in reflective action within the organisation.

Guidance In addressing third and fourth research foci, I produced draft guidance for an awareness building and training workshop, based on the Tracing the Impact framework. This disability awareness workshop (in-

class and webinar) was aimed at improving staff understanding of how different disability types affect lecturers and students. As a deaf lecturer, this was an opportunity for me to share my experiences with the students from the PG Cert programme. The workshop resulted in the development of draft guidance. A second workshop was also developed which explored the idea of engaging students, learning developers, and disabled lecturers in the process. It helps seeing the disabled lecturer as an active catalyst for changing the perceptions about disability.

Because the Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) is being significantly reduced in 2016, it would be beneficial to involve learning developers who could, as the study suggests, promote a tolerance of disability by empowering students to take action and help lecturers in the process, by opening a dialogue between learning developers, disabled lecturers, and students.

Feedback We asked one member of staff the following questions:


Table 3: Feedback from Academic Staff

The comments in Table 3 raised an interesting argument, namely, that disability awareness is not particularly well addressed at an institutional level but also that disability awareness could have been planned for and integrated well into the programme curriculum and that students, who are prospective or current teachers or learning developers, would benefit from this approach and link it to the existing teaching strategy.

Comments from the students (who are also members of staff) from the PG Cert programme about the workshop included:

The group activities are particularly interesting

Sharing experiences with peers (in groups) was exceptionally useful

Teaching students at undergraduate and foundation level is important to have understanding of this issue across the campus

We need more investigation into how some disabilities are diagnosed

I feel that I picked quite a lot of new information

By the (deaf) lecturer telling us what is happening in her head I communicated with her more carefully

Realised how little I knew about Asperger

Excellent session! I would recommend for all staff and students

Overall, student comments about the workshop were very positive, indicating that group work and peer exchange is important in learning to deal with the particular type of disability. It is interesting to note that they came up with potential strategies, based on their experience, and how to adapt them to the specific context, but no context to test them in everyday situations. This suggests a potentially useful role of the workshop, should it be implemented across the institution. In this way, the feedback that I captured from this workshop using the Tracing the Impact framework served as a catalyst for reaching other levels of the university.

Dissemination

The study findings were disseminated at the annual Anglia Learning and Teaching Conference in both 2014 and 2015. The study findings were also disseminated at the ALDinHE Conference 2015 in Southampton, and the Learning Development Eastern Regional Group Meeting 2015 at the University of Bedfordshire. In this way, guidance based on disabled staff experiences offers a 'neutral ground' for the resolution of controversial issues facing them. It was evaluated by the disabled and non-disabled staff members across Anglia Ruskin and outside, their comments incorporated, and, thus, delivering the following benefits for the academic staff and students. It made non-disabled academic staff and students

What made you introduce this workshop? How did you benefit from my workshop?

I really thought it was such good practice for students to be able to see teaching from the view of ‘others’ – it really feeds into the whole ethos of how we talk about inclusive practice but more than this – how we can model good practice. I was also aware of how those with disabilities have so much to offer – but are prevented from doing so because of a lack of understanding – and thought if our PG Cert students listened to your thoughts and insights, it would help them think a little more carefully about the needs of those with a disability – whether a colleague or a student.

For me, it really helped me ‘see’ how difficult it was living life with a disability, and how brilliantly this could be managed by a positive role model. It helped me grasp the ‘possibilities’ for altering/amending / thinking about my own practice in a different way. I also was aware that I did not have a full range of resources for PG Cert students to draw upon, and very much hoped that you would identify some new materials that would help to inform the ‘patches’ students would write, as in the past this patch tended to be rather descriptive. I really liked the different ‘scenarios’ we worked through in class, and thought that we would like to have a workshop based on these materials.



more aware of how disabilities can affect lecturers’ performance. More work remains, including: improving support service for disabled lecturers; informing academic staff at various levels; generating more sustainable and effective human resource policy for disabled staff, and expanding the resources available to tackle disability issues and problems. Due to the limited scope of this project, this opens an avenue for future work in this area.

Conclusion

The study concludes that, while support for disabled students is well-developed, there is a lack of equal and adequate support for disabled academic staff. Disabled lecturers have adapted by developing their capabilities in order to cope with the demands of teaching and learning and, in this way, compensate (Vygotsky, 1978). To avoid creating a stressful and working environment, disabled lecturers need a supportive working environment, developed through robust planning, for better and stable tailored management support that will enable them to achieve their career aspirations and satisfaction at workplace, including amongst other things, provision of adequate teaching spaces, open communication, and a structured career development plan. Institutions have a legal duty to recognise their achievements and help them achieve their career aspirations and greater social mobility. The Tracing the Impact framework emerges as a methodological approach for addressing this issue at all hierarchical levels, e.g. a training workshop for corporate planning for disability awareness building. The study also produced a template for a training workshop. This workshop should become a permanent feature of an institution-wide staff training programme, and an invaluable tool in implementing the university’s equality and diversity strategy. In this sense, Tracing the Impact and the training workshop form a draft guidance that is aimed at improving understanding and tolerance of disability among not only students but also staff, especially when conducting staff performance appraisal, e.g. staff observations, annual appraisal, CPD development, and HEA fellowship applications. Most importantly, management should consider it as an opportunity to manage careers of disabled academics more effectively and create a supportive and humanised workplace.

Acknowledgments

The project was funded by a Learning and Teaching Project Award from Anglia Learning & Teaching. I am grateful to Sally Everett from LAIBS for putting together a project proposal and Anne Hamill from Bulletin for her enthusiasm in designing a call for participation and reaching out. I am indebted to my participants who enthusiastically joined and shared their experiences about how their disabilities affect their teaching and learning. Debbie Holley and Uwe Richter inspired me to spread the project to a wider academic community. My thanks also go to my fellow academic colleagues from LAIBS; Chris Fuller, for intellectual debate and to Nick Drydakis and Zilia Iskoujina for emotional support during the hard times. In their own way, everyone involved in this study, helped enriching our understanding of bounded capabilities and raised the awareness of DisAbility – of being a different, creative and inspiring teacher.

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