Electronic Precinct - August 1998

The HEAR project

In the current era of widening participation, higher education institutions have to meet many new challenges. Institutional change is necessarily slow. However, university staff - who are often the agents of change - have to provide the front line response to the needs of an increasingly diverse st udent population. This can be a daunting task if these needs have never been previously recognised.

The Higher Education Access Research Project (HEAR) in the university believes that staff must be enabled to respond effectively. Staff development programmes are key. They have to acknowledge that staff may be apprehensive when working with students who have non-traditional needs. It is only when staff have the confidence to express these apprehensions that they can be explored and addressed.

The HEAR Project, funded by the European Social Fund, works to promote inclusive policies and practices in education in Merseyside. We acknowledge that the experience of people with impairments is informed by the dominance of the medical model of disability within our culture. This Project actively promotes the social model of disability which recognises that people are disabled by social, attitudinal and environmental barriers, and not their impairments.

We need to enable staff to question this culture prevalence of the medical model of disability. It is only then that staff can begin to perceive disability as an equality issue rather than one of welfare. When staff understand that disabled students need to be enabled, rather than 'taken care of', we can begin to remove the barriers to learning. This will create an enabling learning environment for students with impairments. This, in turn, is a significant step towards creating an inclusive learning environment which will facilitate the needs of all students.

One of the key aims of the HEAR Project is to enable university staff to take this important step. During the next semester we will be piloting staff development sessions entitled 'Disability Etiquette - moving away from the medical model'. We are confident that these sessions will prove valuable, and will encourage staff to identify their own further training needs.

In addition, we have a consultative role, and can be contacted at any time by staff requiring information or advice about specific issues. For more information, contact Eileen White or Ann Wade, The HEAR Project, Tel: (0151) 794 2224. Email: ewhite@liv.ac.uk or annwade@liv.ac.uk