Negotiating Disclosure: Students’ Meaning-Making Around Disability Categories In Higher Education

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session Five
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT013 (Sunday)

Abstract

Over the past three decades, enrollment of students with disabilities in U.S. higher education has risen substantially, yet completion rates remain disproportionately low. While academic accommodations improve outcomes, fewer than half of eligible students disclose their disability to access them. This project investigates that paradox, reframing disclosure from an individual choice to a social process shaped by institutional norms and social identities. Focusing on students with invisible disabilities (conditions not immediately apparent but affecting daily functioning) I follow 50 undergraduates at a Minority Serving Institution over one academic year. Drawing on interviews and policy analysis, the study traces how disability categories are interpreted and negotiated, advancing understandings of disclosure as meaning-making work and informing more equitable systems of support.

Author

• MacKenzie Bonner, University of California - Irvine