Faculty members' provision of instructional accommodations to students with LD

The existing research on the instructional accommodation process of college students with learning disabilities focuses on attitudes and theoretical m odels without delineating actual practices. To date, the discussion of faci litating factors and barriers to this process has been broad and lacking sp ecificity Surveys were mailed to 485 faculty members at the University of M assachusetts, Amherst, who received an instructional accommodation form fro m the office of Learning Disabilities Support Services in the fall of 1995. The survey focused on faculty members' reported degree of ease or difficul ty in implementing instructional accommodations, their perceptions regardin g adequacy of support, and their own beliefs and understandings concerning the need for and benefit of providing instructional accommodations. The res ults indicate that beliefs about the helpfulness of and need for instructio nal accommodations were associated with the provision of the accommodations . Also, a perception of support from the University influenced the ease of providing instructional accommodations. A significant difference was found between the behavior of tenure-track faculty and non-tenure-track faculty.