John Freer

St. Clair College & University of Windsor · School of Community Studies & Faculty of Education

This article presents an assessment tool for doctoral students preparing their comprehensive portfolio. This tool was created from my firsthand experience in the Joint PhD program in Educational Studies—a collaboration between three universities in Ontario, Canada: Lakehead University, Brock University, and the University of Windsor. Following the...

Poor attitudes towards disability held by one's peers can negatively impact the social experiences of students with exceptionalities. Fortunately , educational intervention efforts can serve to enhance children's attitudes towards disability. This quasi-experimental study tested the effectiveness of the Tripartite Intervention (TI), a 12-lesson edu...

This study investigated 128 post-secondary educators’ attitudes toward disability at a college and a university in southwestern Ontario, Canada. The participants completed the Educators’ Attitudes toward Disability Scale (EADS) and a demographic questionnaire that included questions about their experiences with disability. There were three research...

Disability is a complex phenomenon that children often find challenging to fully grasp. Understanding how children perceive disability, however, could have important implications for the social inclusion of students with disabilities. Once we understand how children conceptualize disability, efforts can be made to help students critically analyze m...

Students with disabilities face attitudinal barriers to social inclusion. Poor attitudes toward disability can impact friendship development between students with and without disabilities and result in social exclusion. Fortunately, a body of literature exists, which suggests that educational interventions can help to enhance students’ attitudes to...

Inclusive education is a philosophy and practice that has been promoted internationally. Most scholars now agree that inclusion is more than the placement of students with exceptionalities in a general education class. Instead, definitions of inclusion have expanded to encompass feelings of belongingness. This definition is an improvement, but begs...

This paper explores the development of a flexible, free, online certificate program built on open educational resources to support instructors transitioning to online and non-traditional teaching modes. The program offers multiple pathways to completion, including recognition of prior learning and immersing participants in the online learning envir...

In recent years, educational assistants (EAs) have taken on an integral role in special education. They often work with the most challenging and vulnerable student population (i.e., students with exceptionalities). To prepare EAs, some of Ontario's publicly funded colleges have developed pre-service training programs. In Ontario, the number of stud...

This article presents the Educators’ Attitudes toward Disability Scale (EADS). This scale was developed from the Social Workers Attitudes toward Disability Scale (SWADS). A sample of 128 postsecondary educators from one college and one university in Ontario, Canada completed the EADS, the Attitudes toward Disabled Persons scale (ATDP), and a demogr...