Poster #82 - Children’s reasoning about the fairness of common school accommodations for children with disabilities

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

Approximately 1 in 6 children in the United States has been diagnosed with a developmental disability, and most attend school with typically-developing classmates (Koller et al., 2018; Rose & Gage, 2016). In inclusive classroom settings, students with disabilities may need and may receive a number of accommodations (e.g., completing less or different classwork, leaving the classroom early/at unexpected times, use of special technology). Many K-12 teachers feel ill-prepared or underqualified to teach or even address disability-related topics in their classrooms (Ware, 2001), so these accommodations most often go unaddressed or unexplained to observing, typically-developing students, even though these children may be noticing and curious about them (Lalvani, 2015). Sensitivity to fairness among young children emerges early (Geraci & Surian, 2011), with children increasingly emphasizing equity (as opposed to equality) in late childhood, around 8 years of age (Smith & Werneken, 2016). We will present a pre-registered study (https://aspredicted.org/Y3P_QF9) exploring developmental differences in how children’s (5, 7, and 9 years of age) fairness judgments and reasoning about school accommodations are influenced by the presence and type of disability (physical vs. learning disability), as well as how their reasoning may impact their evaluations of the accommodations. Participants (target N = 120) are randomly assigned to hear stories about children whose “brains work different than most kids’ brains” (cognitive disability) or to hear stories about children whose “legs work different than most kids’ legs” (physical disability). Participants are asked to imagine they are part of a classroom with lots of different kids – some whose brains/legs work like most kids’, and some that work different. In each scenario, participants are told about a different child exhibiting some aberrant behavior in the classroom environment (e.g., doing less classwork, using a computer to read, going to recess first, playing soccer with their hands). Half of these accommodations pertain to a learning disability, while the other half pertain to a physical/walking disability. Participants are asked to reason about “why” that child may be exhibiting that behavior, whether it’s fair or not, and how fair/unfair it is (little or very). Responses to the open-ended questions about why each accommodation might occur will be coded for use of common categories of reasoning (e.g., mentioning the disability, negative traits/motives). We will report findings on (1) age-related trends in children’s judgments of accommodation fairness, (2) whether children’s judgments of the fairness of accommodations depend on the match between the disability and the accommodation (e.g., a physical accommodation for a physical disability vs. a physical accommodation for a cognitive disability), and (3) associations between the use of common categories of reasoning and fairness judgments.

Authors

• Nicolette Granata, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author

• Chyna Bacchus

• Melanie Leguizamon, Vanderbilt University

• Jonathan D. Lane, Vanderbilt University