대학에 입학하게 되면서 많은 학생들은 새로운 적응을 요구받게 된다. 특히 장애학생의 경우 자신이 지닌 장애로 인하여 추가적인 어려움을 겪게 된다. 이에 본 연구는 시각장애, 청각장애, 지체장애 학생의 대학 생활 적응 과정에 관하여 근거이론적 접근을 기반으로 한 질적 연구방법을 통하여 분석하는 데에 그 목적이 있다. 본 연구는 A대학에 재학 중인 총 4명의 장애대학생(시각장애 1명, 지체장애 3명)을 그 대상으로 선정한 후 개별 심층면담을 실시하였으며, 그 내용을 근거이론을 통하여 분석하였다. 연구결과 장애대학생 대학생들은 대학 생활 적응 과정을 분석할 수 있었으며 핵심범주로 ‘현실 수용과 노력을 통해 대학 장면으로 통합됨’을 찾을 수 있었다. 또한 대학 생활 적응 과정을 개인적 특성에 따라 현실 수용형과 도전형으로 그 유형을 나누어 분석하였으며, 연구결과를 토대로 장애대학생의 대학 생활 적응 과정의 시사점을 논의에서 제시하였다.
University is where students encounter for the first time various problems in every aspect of our lives. Students in college typically have difficulty in studying, adjustment, career, and also have troubles of academic studies, career issues, interpersonal relation, emotion and sexual issues. Students with disabilities also have difficulties in transition to college. For them, adjustment to college is more challengeable task than their peers without disabilities because their disabilities made it worse due to their psychological, emotional, and physical difficulties.
This study aims to “literally” explore the key status for adjustment to college procedure of students with disabilities, and causal, context, and other influential factors on solving the key status through in-depth interview and analyze them using a grounded theory approach. The subjects are 4 college students with disabilities in Seoul area. Four of them are all male students; two of them have physical impairment from a muscular disease, one of them has low vision, and another has speech and physical impairment from cerebral palsy. All participants have had their disabilities by birth, and had been placed in a full-time classroom before they entered college.
As a result, 103 concepts, 43 subcategories, and 23 categories were drawn. Furthermore, categories were combined with 'environmental difficulties', 'physical limitation due to their disability', 'lack of information', 'difficulty in studying' as causal condition, 'limitation in institutional support', 'perception in disability' as contextual condition, 'burden and unfamiliar with college life adjustment' as phenomenon, 'institutional support', 'support of people around', 'personal characteristic', 'personal attitude and effort for studies', and 'support for classes' as intervening condition, 'broaden experiences', 'positive adaptation about disabilities', and 'personal effort for problem solving' as action strategies, and 'accept disabilities', 'broaden interpersonal relation', 'psychological and positive changes', 'changes of people around' and 'change to positive life' as consequences by paradigm model of grounded theory. Key categories about participant’s college life adjustment procedures were ‘reality adaptation and effort for adjustment’, and according to procedure analysis, students with disabilities undergo experience barrier, burden and unfamiliar, adaptation and effort, and integration therefore finally they could apply into college life through reality adaptation and effort.