Students with Disabilities and the Transition to Work: A Capabilities Approach

✍ Scribed by Oliver Mutanga

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 165
• Series: Routledge Advances in Disability Studies
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book sets out to understand how students with disabilities experience higher education and the transition to the workplace. It foregrounds the voices of students and graduates in order to explore identity, inclusion, participation and success of youth with disabilities in higher education, as well as their transition from university to employment.

The author proposes a new understanding of disability, considered in terms of a continuum of abilities, balancing empirical data, theory and policy analysis with specific regard to the interests of youth with disabilities, making a unique contribution to discussions on access, inclusion and success in higher education and employment. These discussions inform social development and educational policy planning and implementation, not only in South Africa, but also in countries with a similar context, particularly in terms of remedial courses of action that bring social justice to people with disabilities.

Students with Disabilities and the Transition to Work will be of interest to all scholars and students working in the fields of disability studies, particularly those with a focus on critical disability studies and disability in the global south, as well as those working in higher education, sociology, development studies and social policy.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
The study
Participants’ personal biographies (2013)
The universities
Structure of the book
2. Students with disabilities in higher education: A global perspective
Introduction
Perceptions and experiences of students with disabilities in higher
education
Higher education institutions’ responses to the needs of students
with disabilities
Positive responses by higher education institutions
Differences between higher education institutions
Differences within higher education institutions
Dearth or absence of entrenching of disability-inclusive policies and practices in
higher education institutions
Discussion
Conclusion
3. Students with disabilities in South African higher education
Introduction
Conceptualising disability
Students with disabilities’ access and participation in higher education
Apartheid period
Post-1994
Access challenges
Supporting mechanisms for students with disabilities
The role of Disability Units
The role of lecturers
The role of assistive technology
Other enabling factors
Discussion
Conclusion
4. Disability models or approaches
Introduction
The medical model
The social model
The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health
The human rights approach
Conclusion
5. Capability approaches
Introduction
Amartya Sen’s capability approach
Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach
Capability approaches and disability
Capabilities
Functionings
Conversion factors
Heterogeneities
Agency
Adaptive preference and compensating abilities
Theory of participatory parity
Conclusion
6. Disabled or not disabled?
Introduction
Conceptualising disability
Findings
Discussion
Conclusion
7. Inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education
Introduction
Inclusion and exclusion
Findings
Funding conditions
Social networks
Access to teaching and learning
Assessment and examination
Discussion
Conclusion
8. Factors affecting the lives of students with disabilities at university
Introduction
Intersectionality and disability studies
Findings
Gender and impairment
Race/class and impairment
Family upbringing and impairment
Pre-university schooling and impairment
Impairment and university arrangements
Type of impairment and disadvantage
Culture and impairment
Geographical location and impairment
Discussion
Conclusion
9. Resilience and coping strategies
Introduction
Coping mechanisms
Findings
How coping strategies are manifested in participants’ lives
Factors that enable students with disabilities to cope
Personal characteristics
Family and friends
Teachers
Faith/religion
Lecturers
Discussion
Conclusion
10. Valued opportunities
Introduction
Capabilities approach, disability and the dilemma of difference
The ‘dilemma of difference’
A list of capabilities
Findings
Capabilities and valued functionings
Capabilities from Walker’s (2006) list
Capabilities from Wolff and de-Shalit’s (2007) list
Additional higher education capabilities
Discussion
Conclusion
11. Youth with disabilities and their transition to employment
Introduction
Findings
Personal traits
Education and workplace arrangements
Social, economic and political arrangements
Discussion
Conclusion
12. Beyond the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Sustainable Development Goals
Introduction
National and international disability frameworks
Possibilities and ways forward
Government, relevant ministries and policy-makers
Higher education and employers
Students with disabilities
Conclusion
Index