Chapter 14.8: Academic support - Placement
14.8.1. Recommended practices of preparation for placement
- Students with disabilities and staff concerned are advised to start discussing the placement arrangement as early as possible. It allows sufficient time to match an appropriate placement site and to arrange required accessibility services.
- Students with disabilities should proactively look up more information about the nuances of placement, workplace and any details relevant to the placement arrangement.
- Students with disabilities may work with their course instructors and any other staff concerned to devise some plausible solutions to the anticipated barriers.
- Record the plausible solutions properly. This information might be useful for communicating with and empowering the placement hosts to show them the preparedness, readiness, capability of the students with disabilities.
- It facilitates timely arrangement of accessibility services.
- After obtaining informed consent from the students with disabilities, the placement coordinator and Accessibility Service Coordinator can assist the students with disabilities in communicating with the placement site regarding the accessibility arrangements. The students should always be involved in the communication process.
- Pre-visit at the placement site and/or pre-run of some of the placement tasks could be arranged.
- Take teaching practicum as an example. If possible, students can run a trial teaching at their home university or even the placement site to get more concrete ideas of any potential barriers and required accommodations.
- For clinical placement, if possible, students can spend time shadowing faculty or clinicians in the clinic to better understand the environment to get more concrete idea of any potential barriers and required accommodations.
- The University may promote the use of Braille name cards.
- Students with disabilities and university the concerned may proactively organize meetings with the partnering hosts (e.g. the placement supervisors concerned) to mutually address any concerns before the placement begins.
- To mutually understand more about the expectations and anticipated concerns of the partnering hosts regarding admitting interns with disabilities beforehand.
- To mutually understand more about the expectations, anticipated concerns, plausible solutions of the students with disabilities regarding the placement.
- To ensure students with disabilities will be provided with active and essential roles as well as reasonable tasks during the placement period
- To ensure both the students with disabilities and the partnering hosts will benefit from the placement to the fullest extent.
14.8.2. Establishing network and resources to promote inclusive placement
- The University may proactively organize workshops and chat sessions to proactively reach out to the persons-in-charge of the partnering hosts to mutually understand more about the anticipated concerns and plausible solutions regarding admitting interns with disabilities.
- The University may invite students (both with and without disabilities) who are in placement to voluntarily respond to a brief survey on the accessibility of their own placement sites to co-create a database for future reference. Along with the sharing of the students, the database will be useful to other students with disabilities for placement matching and timely accessibility arrangements and might also help cultivate an awareness of accessibility among students.
- The University may connect alumni with disabilities and collect their placement experience for future reference and sharing with current students for effective and timely arrangement and preparation.
- The University may collaborate with NGOs which specialize in supporting the employment of tertiary students with disabilities in seeking placement positions and experience sharing.
14.8.3. References
- CareER, Hong Kong Part of its services is to provide job-matching service for higher educated persons with disabilities or special educational needs.
- Job Accommodation Network JAN, Office of Disability Employment Policy It provides detailed examples of employment- and workplace-related accommodations for employees of different disability.
- Lima, J.M. & Ivy, S.E. (2017). Improving Observation and Practicum Experiences for a Preservice Teacher with Visual Impairment through the Use of Assistive Technology. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 111(6), 587-592.