The Psychosocial Development of College Students with and without Learning Disabilities.

Abstract

This study was designed to explore the psychosocial development of college students with and without learning disabilities. The construct of psychosocial development was measured by the Student Developmental Task and Lifestyle Inventory (SDTLI; Winston and Miller,1987). Analysis of the data revealed significant differences between students with and without learning disabilities in terms of their academic autonomy and mature interpersonal relationships. There were no differences found between the two groups within the developmental constructs of purpose, salubrious lifestyle, and intimacy. It appears that the presence of a learning disability may interfere with psychosocial development and/or that students with learning disabilities may unknowingly sacrifice psychosocial development to maintain acceptable academic standards including grade point average and academic progress. Universities in the United States have experienced a dramatic increase in the number of students with disabilities admitted to postsecondary institutions (American Council on Education, 1996; Henderson, 1992, 1995). The primary catalyst impacting this increase was federal legislation that mandated that individuals with disabilities were to be protected from discrimination in educational settings (Scott, 1996). A sub-group within this expanding population that demonstrated the most dramatic increase has been individuals with learning disabilities (American Council on Education, 1996; Henderson, 1995). This group represents approximately one-third of the matriculated students with disabilities entering post-secondary education (Henderson, 1995). Due to the obvious growth in numbers of students with learning disabilities, the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (1988) recommended a systematic program of research to examine the psychosocial and academic performance differences among individuals with learning disabilities. In 1991, Gottesman suggested that the lifelong effects of a learning disability appeared to be far greater than simply the persistence of difficulties in reading, writing, and spelling. Gottesman went on to suggest that learning disabilities have had significant impact on the education, employment, interpersonal relationships, and emotional well being of those individuals with this disorder. In 1996, Carroll and Johnson Brown suggested that college students with learning disabilities presented support needs that were psychosocial as well as academic in nature. This study attempted to synthesize the existing literature concerning college student development and link that information to the psychosocial development of traditional college age students with learning disabilities. A theory of college student development initially proposed by Arthur Chickering in 1969, and revised in 1993 by Chickering and Reisser has been the dominant paradigm for student development research over the past thirty years (Garfield & David, 1986; Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991; Thrasher and Bloland, 1989; White & Hood, 1989), and therefore was employed in this study. At the core of Chickering and Reisser’s theory are the seven vectors of college student development which were built upon two of Eric Erikson’s stages of adolescent and young adult development. The intent of this study was to compare traditional age university students with and without learning disabilities on a measure of psychosocial development that was based on the theoretical foundation as proposed by Chickering (1969) and Chickering and Reisser (1993). The specific research question employed in this study was: Is there a difference in the psychosocial development between university students who had self-identified as having learning disabilities, and their peers who had not?

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