Students with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic: how an inverted disaster impacted educational access, student outcomes, and family strain
Date
2024
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Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, school buildings were closed, and education took place through a variety of at-home, virtual, and hybrid learning models. These alternative teaching modalities were especially challenging for students with disabilities. As a socially vulnerable population, children with disabilities and their families are at greater risk of poor outcomes during disasters and disruptions in schooling. The pandemic was also a different type of disaster. In this dissertation, I propose the COVID-19 pandemic was an inverted disaster, defined by the following characteristics: it was temporally and spatially unbounded; it posed a physical yet invisible threat to all human lives; and its ubiquity and invisibility led to the breakdown of institutional and social support systems. As schools were closed, educators were left unprepared for continued learning during such an event. Students with disabilities rely on the consistency of educational and therapeutic services, accommodations, and modifications for their continued learning and growth. The pandemic presents an urgent need to examine the delivery and consequences of education for these students, and to discover best practices for moving forward. This dissertation is guided by the following research questions: 1) How was education altered during the pandemic? 2) How did shifts in education differentially impact students with disabilities and their parents? and, 3) How did parents mitigate the impacts of school closures during the pandemic, despite the unique challenges posed by the disaster? To answer these questions, I conducted a mixed-methods study that included: 1) surveys with 125 parents and caregivers of children in K-8 grades; 2) qualitative in-depth interviews with a subsample of 39 parents in Northern Colorado; and 3) social network analysis with 29 of these parents. Fifty percent of parents who participated had at least one child with a disability. This study represents a total of 248 children, 83 of which were identified as having a disability qualifying them for special education services. First, findings from this dissertation revealed that due to a lack of preparation and planning for an inverted disaster, schools were unable to provide consistent, equitable educational services to students with disabilities throughout waves of the pandemic. These students faced structural barriers to education that limited their access to general and special education, therapeutic services, and their peers and educational support systems. Second, due to these barriers, students with disabilities experienced greater setbacks in their academics, physical and mental health, and their socio-emotional development. Third, parents experienced strain on their roles, their homes, and their relationships. Role conflict was greater for parents who had a child with a disability. Fourth, parents of children with disabilities reported more stress, worry, and lower wellbeing than their peers. The intersectionality of disability with single parenthood, race, socioeconomic status, and work location impacted various aspects of mental health in disproportionate ways. Fifth, parents mitigated the impacts of the pandemic and school closures by altering forms of connection with their social networks and by developing new networks to meet the unique demands of the pandemic. Parents with stronger social support networks (i.e. larger, denser, more diverse, etc.) experienced less mental health strain than parents who had weaker networks. Social networks provided a buffer to the negative impacts of the pandemic and school closures on parents. This dissertation contributes to scholarly literature by introducing the concept of the inverted disaster as a new way to define the pandemic and understand its impacts on educational equity, children with disabilities, and their parents. This research outlines how the characteristics of the inverted disaster led to a breakdown of institutional and support systems and to the exclusion of children with disabilities from vital educational and therapeutic services. It also examines the disproportionate impacts on parents, linking patterns of disadvantage with mental health outcomes. Methodologically, I explore how the strength of social networks can be measured and analyzed as mitigating factors on parental mental health. Based on the findings from this research, I recommend strategies for improved disaster management and educational policies for continued special education during disaster that prioritize children with disabilities. I also propose strategies for community building and strengthening social networks among at-risk families.
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Subject
education
pandemic
disability
social networks
mental health