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<p><h1>There is a growing number of students with disabilities accessing postsecondary education in Ontario. Among this student body, students with learning disabilities are the largest sub-group. These students transition into knowledge workplaces, which have significant cognitive performance standards. Although there is some emerging literature on the outcome of university graduates with learning disabilities, there is little known about their <em>experiences </em>during this transition process.</h1></p> <p>There are two central purposes of this doctoral thesis: a) to provide insight into the experiences of transition for university graduates with learning disabilities, and b) to critically reflect upon the practicalities and politics of implementing participatory action research. The papers gathered in this dissertation are based upon a participatory action research project with mentees, and interviews with both mentees and mentors from a learning disability mentorship program at an Ontario university. The first paper is a collaborative writing piece with co-researchers that applies an analogy of ‘taking center stage’ to reflect upon the process of participation for co-researchers. The second paper involves a critical reflection of the <em>imagined distance </em>that took place amongst the research team, and an exploration of participatory techniques to address this distance. The third paper examines qualitative interviews with mentors and mentees on three stages of the transition process: interview, general cognitive ability testing and probationary period.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Background: As a result of the changes in support for adults with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) and the increasing emphasis on independent living within the community, individuals commonly live in their own homes with support provided by voluntary or private services. As a result, support staff play a huge role in the lives of adults with ID and are often the mediators of interventions aimed at reducing distress or the occurrence of challenging behaviour. Issues relating to the well-being of support staff and how they manage behaviours that challenge services are central to the quality of the lives of adults with ID. Method: A systematic review was carried out regarding interventions aimed at reducing stress felt by staff supporting adults with ID, with the aim of informing the clinical practice of psychologists that work with such staff groups. An empirical study employing the qualitative methodology of grounded theory was also conducted to explore the experiences of staff working with clinical psychologists outside of their organisation in the development of support guidelines aimed at reducing challenging behaviour. Results: Findings from the Systematic Review highlighted the lack of high quality intervention studies aimed at reducing stress in staff. Some tentative support was found for interventions based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and those taking a more practical problem-solving approach. The empirical study resulted in a tentative model within which the role of expectations was highlighted as key to staff’s experiences of working with professionals. Conclusion: Further research is required in order to identify the most effective ways to reduce stress experienced by staff working with adults with ID. The constructed theoretical model suggests ways in which psychologists can understand the experience of staff and has implications for their practice.

Membership in a social movement organization (SMO) and membership discourse provide space for participants to name and reconstitute their experiences, bodies, and self-images through an embodiment of organizational frames. This reconstitution is especially affirmed in the interaction of marginalized groups, such as individuals with disabilities, whom make up disability focused organizations and social movements. As a group with multiple intersectionalities, as well as an even smaller subsection of various marginalized populations, individuals with blindness face unique barriers when consideration of participants' identities and self-understandings is central in understanding entry as well as ongoing participation in organizations. Disability based organizations, represented by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), must carefully frame the organizational membership of certain individuals whom could threaten cohesion through differing understanding of identities, not revolving around disability. This thesis is an examination of the organizational discourse and the "membership meetness" of participating persons in the NFB. Goffman’s notion of “breaking frame” theoretically informs this analysis of organizational discourse produced by the 'collective blind' in one of the oldest American disability social movement organizations to date. The NFB’s attempt to mitigate the “broken frame” introduced by the incorporation of members whom are not seemingly suitable and do not self identify as blind, into an overwhelmingly blindness based enterprise is to strategically mend existing frames to reinterpret extant social norms. The purpose of this thesis is to use a grounded theory approach, to tease out how membership is framed. In the NFB, frame alignment is accomplished by: framing blindness through allies transformed as friends, framing blindness as a characteristic, framing blindness as respectability, and framing blindness through rhetorical humor in narrative. The above four frames to disability based social movements offers researchers the opportunity to understand how groups attempt to integrate into their activities members who lack “membership meetness” while simultaneously garnering support and advancing interests within the larger movement. / text

With an aging population there is a growing need to assist people with disabilities. Particularly crucial is assisting people who cannot stand between positions necessary for everyday living, such as from a wheelchair to the toilet. It is unsafe to transfer people with direct manual techniques, thus a patient handling device is required. To reduce the burden on the healthcare system it is beneficial for disabled people to be cared for in-home. Many in-home caregivers may be physically impaired, thus patient handling devices for this use must require as little effort as possible. This thesis found that existing manual patient handling devices contained significant weaknesses when used for in-home care and there is potential to improve upon them. Expert interviews, computer modelling and physical models were used to develop a novel patient handling device which addresses these identified weaknesses. A reduction in the number of operator tasks, operation time and operation force was achieved. A method of supporting the patient solely by their upper body is required by the novel patient handling device, though an acceptable way of incorporating this has yet to be achieved. Testing of an upper body enclosure support revealed that a person may be supported by their lower thorax without substantial clamping or physical effort from the patient. Such a support has potential to be developed into an acceptable solution. Further development and testing in variable conditions encountered during practical patient handling is required.

Introduction: Previously diversion from the criminal justice system for people with LD and forensic needs had meant hospitalisation, but more recently a model of community-based rehabilitation has become possible via new mental health legislation. Community-based orders aim to rehabilitate clients via compulsory, intensive staff support. Although this model is beneficial in theory, empirical evidence suggests there may be a number of issues in practice. The current study aimed to capture the subjective experience of a group of individuals with LD and forensic needs currently on community-based orders. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten participants subject to a community-based order which obliged them to accept intensive staff support. All participants were male. Ages, index behaviour, and time spent on order varied. The data was transcribed and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results: The main themes which emerged from the data were A taste of freedom, Not being in control, Getting control back, Loneliness, and Feeling like a service user. Overall the results indicated a general ambivalence towards support. Discussion: Participant accounts suggest that the current community rehabilitation model has some shortcomings which need to be addressed. The system as it stands appears to promote high levels of external control, failing to empower clients to self-manage. Suggestions are made for improvements to the current model relating to: achieving clarity over the role of support staff and pathways out of the system; increasing opportunities for service users to voice concerns; empowering staff teams via extensive training and supervision; and directly addressing internalised stigma to promote integration.

This researcher investigated the effects of repeated reading, performance feedback, and systematic error correction on the reading fluency of three secondary English language learners (ELLs) with a specific learning disability (SLD) in reading. A multiple baseline reversal design across subjects was used to explore the effects of repeated reading on two dependent variables: reading fluency (words read correctly per minute; wpm) and number of errors per minute (epm). Data were collected and analyzed during baseline, intervention, and maintenance probes.Throughout the baseline phase participants read a passage aloud and during intervention phases, participants read a passage aloud and received error correction feedback. During baseline, reading was followed by fluency assessments. During intervention, reading was followed by three oral repeated readings of the passage. Maintenance sessions occurred 1, 2, and 3 weeks after the intervention ended.The researcher of this study concluded that repeated reading had a positive effect on the reading abilities of ELLs with a SLD in reading. Participants read more wpm and made fewer epm. Additionally, maintenance scores were slightly varied when compared to the last day of intervention; however, maintenance scores were higher than baseline means.The researcher of this study demonstrated that repeated reading improved the reading abilities of ELLs with a SLD in reading. On maintenance probes 1, 2, and 3 weeks following intervention mean reading fluency and errors per minute remained above baseline levels. Future researchers should investigate the use of repeated reading in ELLs with a SLD in reading at various stages of reading acquisition. Further, future researchers may examine how repeated reading can be integrated into classroom instruction and assessments.

An emerging theory of learning disabilities characterized learning disabled students as inactive learners who do not spontaneously employ task-appropriate cognitive strategies. This study addressed the range of tasks to which this characterization applies. It compared learning disabled and average achieving students' spontaneous activation of differential reading strategies as evoked by the situational context of reading tasks. Subjects were 20 learning disabled and 20 average achieving seventh graders. Groups were controlled for age and non-verbal intelligence. Learning disabled students had been diagnosed as such and exhibited serious reading difficulties. Within two experimentally induced situational contexts, students read and retold short, narrative passages which contained interpropositional consistencies. Within a storytelling context, designed to maximize interaction between text and background knowledge, subjects were instructed to think about the appropriateness of the passage for young children and imagine a first-grade audience while accurately retelling the passage. Within a memory context, designed to maximize differentiation of text from background knowledge, the same subjects were to read and retell another story for the sole purpose of maintaining accuracy. Stories were counterbalanced across contexts. Retellings were categorized as either evidencing distortions which resolved text inconsistencies or as accurately maintaining the inconsistencies of the original text. Nonparametric tests were used for data analysis. Results indicated that both groups shifted retell strategy in response to situational context, with no significant differences between groups. Within the storytelling context, retellings tended to resolve passage inconsistencies. Within the memory context, retellings were generally accurate in their maintenance of inconsistencies. The memory context also fostered increased accuracy for both groups on a sentence recognition task. Responses to comprehension monitoring questions suggested on relationship between retell strategy and students' expressed awareness of text inconsistency. Findings indicate that both learning disabled and average students respond to situational contexts of reading tasks. They can activate increased interaction between text and background knowledge or increased differentiation of text from background knowledge. It was concluded that the characterization of learning disabled students as cognitively inactive does not apply to the spontaneous activation of differential reading strategies evoked by the situational context of the reading act.

Open-ended interview questions were asked to ten college freshmen with learning disabilities (LD) to provide the primary source of data in this qualitative study that was done to explore personal experiences of these students in transitioning from high school to a large university. Student participants were chosen based on meeting the criteria of having a diagnosed specific learning disability, having qualified and received special education services in high school, and at the time of the study were receiving accommodations through the Disability Resource Center (DRC) at the University of Arizona (UA). Students were further identified as members of a "successful" group with a first semester grade point average (GPA) of 3.0 or higher, or members of a "jeopardy" group with a first semester GPA of below 2.0 and the academic status of probation. This was done in order to ensure that I included the perceptions of students at the high and low range of academic status levels in this sample, not to compare or contrast the two groups. Interviews yielded information about student perceptions of barriers, attitudes, resources and assistive factors in the transition process. Data were analyzed to determine themes related to student success and difficulties. Suggestions for further research and information for future practice are offered.

The purpose of this study was to compare two groups of males in Arizona Department of Corrections (ADJC) custody with regard to three factors. The first group consisted of youth sentenced to ADJC who later received criminal charges for which they were transferred to the adult court system, ("Transferred" group), and the second group involved youth sentenced to ADJC who did not receive any additional criminal charges for which they were transferred, ("Non-Transferred" group). The variables examined were: youth with versus without a special education disability diagnosis, most serious level of offense for which the youth was imprisoned, and ethnicity. Due to the lack of prior research in this area, only null hypotheses were formulated. The first hypothesis was there would be no significant differences between the two groups on the observed versus expected frequencies of each of the variables studied. The second hypothesis was that there would be no significant association between the two groups with regard to their disability status on each of the variables.The results showed that regarding disability status, the null hypothesis was not rejected. The frequency of disabilities represented in both groups and the proportion of youth eligible to receive special education services was not different. Regarding the seriousness of offense level, the null hypothesis that both groups were identical was not rejected; indicating that the Transferred group was not significantly different from the Non-Transferred group in frequency of most serious offense level. In terms of disability status, and level of offense committed, the null hypothesis was also not rejected. Finally, regarding ethnic representation, no significant associations were found for the groups.The groups studied showed a larger percentage of youth receiving special education services, in comparison to the percentage of youth receiving special education services within the whole educational system. The groups also had a larger percentage of minorities compared to the latest Arizona census information on ethnic backgrounds of children under age 18. The results highlight the similarities between the Transferred and Non-Transferred groups and discuss the implications of the findings, future research directions, and the study's limitations.