Fieldwork and disability: an overview for an inclusive experience
Open accessAbstract
Fieldwork forms the basis of geoscience studies. However, field activities present limitations for people with mental or physical impairments. This aspect can preclude participation in field trips by certain groups of students or limit their experience. In recent years, new types of supporting material and the development of accessible field trips have been a step forward towards the reduction of barriers to inclusion and equal opportunity. In the present work, normal practices of field teaching and potential solutions (and their limitations) to foster inclusion and accessibility to fieldwork are presented.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Digital accessibility barriers intersect with physical infrastructure challenges.
“Moreover, these digital accessibility barriers intersect with physical infrastructure challenges.”
From "I Don't Trust Any Professional Research Tool": A Re-Imagination of Knowledge Production Workflows by, with, and for Blind and Low-Vision Researchers (2026) · cites this paper as [16]
Section 3.1 (page unavailable) discusses inaccessible field sites alongside limitations of digital alternatives, including low-resolution 3D maps and the effects of prolonged virtual-environment use. It also describes telepresence as an option when multiple means of physical access cannot be arranged. This supports a connection in the fieldwork context, but the paper does not establish the broader claim that digital accessibility barriers intersect with physical infrastructure challenges. (LLM, conf=0.77)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredTransportation limitations and inaccessible fieldwork sites create compounding exclusions, particularly affecting researchers with multiple marginalized identities.
“Transportation limitations and inaccessible fieldwork sites create compounding exclusions [16, 67], particularly affecting researchers with multiple marginalized identities [11, 30].”
From "I Don't Trust Any Professional Research Tool": A Re-Imagination of Knowledge Production Workflows by, with, and for Blind and Low-Vision Researchers (2026) · cites this paper as [16]
Section 3.1 (page unavailable) says inaccessible field sites can exclude students and notes the physical strain of getting on and off a bus. It does not establish that transportation and site barriers compound one another, or that researchers with multiple marginalized identities are particularly affected; the paper discusses students with disabilities. (LLM, conf=0.85)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
E-learning and Disability in Higher Education
Seale, J. (2013) · doi:10.4324/9780203095942 · Cited by 102 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 20
- Atchison CL, Parker WG, Riggs NR, Semken S and Whitmeyer SJ (2019) Accessibility and inclusion in the field: a field guide for central Arizona and Petrified Forest National Park. In Geologic Excursions in Southwestern North America (ed. PA Pearthree), pp. 39-60. Boulder, Colorado: Geological Society of America Field Guide 55.
- Barrett J (2004) Side Effects of Virtual Environments: A Review of the Literature. Edinburgh, Australia: Defense Sciences and Technology Organisation Information Sciences Laboratory.
- Buckley SJ, Naumann N, Ringdal K, Dolva B, Tong B, Vanbiervliet J, Kurz T and Howell J (2018) Enhanced excursions: how virtual field trips comple- ment existing geoscience field activities. 3rd Virtual Geoscience Conference Proceedings, 22-24 August 2018, Kingston, Canada.
- Chiarella D (2019) Special educational needs and fieldwork. Science 364, 944-5. doi: 10.1126/science.aax7041. · DOI
- Feig AD, Atchison CL, Stokes A and Gilley B, 2019. Achieving inclusive field- based education: results and recommendations from an accessible geoscience field trip. The Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 19, 66-87. doi: 10.14434/josotl.v19i1.23455. · DOI
- Fuller M, Georgeson J, Healey M, Hurst A, Kelly K, Riddell S, Roberts H and Weedon E (2009) Improving Disabled Students' Learning: Experiences and Outcomes. London: Routledge.
- Gilley BH, Atchison CL, Feig A and Stokes A (2015) Impact of inclusive field trips. Nature Geoscience 8, 579-80. doi: 10.1038/ngeo2500. · DOI
- Hall T, Healey M and Harrison M (2002) Fieldwork and disabled students: discourses of exclusion and inclusion. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 27, 213-31.
- Hendricks JE, Atchison CL and Feig AD (2017) Effective use of personal assistants for students with disabilities: lessons learned from the 2014 acces- sible geoscience field trip. Journal of Geoscience Education 65, 72-80.
- Marcal E, Viana W, Andrade RMC and Rodrigues D (2014) A mobile learning system to enhance field trips in geology. IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 22-25 October 2014, Madrid, Spain. Proceedings. Piscataway, New Jersey: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/FIE.2014.7044030. · DOI
- Mogk DW (2011) Get ready, get set, go : : : on a field trip. In Archean to Anthropocene: Field Guides to the Geology of the Mid-Continent of North America (eds JD Miller, GJ Hudak, C Wittkop and PI McLaughlin), pp. 477-82. Boulder, Colorado: Geological Society of America Field Guide 24. doi: 10.1130/2011.0024(23). · DOI
- Mogk DW and Goodwin C (2012) Learning in the field: synthesis of research on thinking and learning in the geosciences. In Earth and Mind II: A Synthesis of Research on Thinking and Learning in the Geosciences (eds CA Kastens and CA Manduca), pp. 131-63. Geological Society of America Special Paper 486. doi: 10.1130/2012.2486(24). · DOI
- Mol L and Atchison C (2019) Image is everything: educator awareness of per- ceived barriers for students with physical disabilities in geoscience degree programs. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 43, 544-67. doi: 10. 1080/03098265.2019.1660862. · DOI
- Orion N and Hofstein A (1994) Factors that influence learning during a sci- entific field trip in a natural environment. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 31, 1097-119.
- Petcovic HL, Stokes A and Caulkins JL (2014) Geoscientists' perceptions of the value of undergraduate field education. GSA Today 24, 4-10. doi: 10.1130/ GSATG196A. · DOI
- Poussu-Olli HS (1999) To be a disable university student in Finland. Disability and Society 14, 103-30. · DOI
- Riddell S and Weedon E (2014) Disabled students in higher education: dis- courses of disability and the negotiation of identity. International Journal of Educational Research 63, 38-46.
- Stokes A, Feig AD, Atchison CL and Gilley B (2019) Making geoscience field- work inclusive and accessible for students with disabilities. Geosphere 15, 1809-25. doi: 10.1130/GES02006. · DOI · Paper page
- US Department of Education (2020) Office of Special Education Programs, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) database. Available at https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgg.asp (accessed 20 February 2020). · DOI · Paper page
- Whitmeyer SJ, Mogk DW and Pyle EJ (2009) An introduction to historical perspectives on and modern approaches to field geology education. In Field Geology Education: Historical Perspectives and Modern Approaches (eds SJ Whitmeyer, DW Mogk & EJ Pyle), p. 356. Boulder, Colorado: Geological Society of America Special Papers 461. doi: 10.1130/SPE461. · DOI
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Khan, O., & Seo, J. (2026) · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3772318.3791242 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“Transportation limitations and inaccessible fieldwork sites create compounding exclusions [16, 67], particularly affecting researchers with multiple marginalized identities [11, 30].”
- Authors
- Chiarella, D., & Vurro, G.
- Affiliations
- Royal Holloway University of London (GB)
- University of Sussex (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Chiarella, Domenico
- ORCID
- Chiarella, Domenico
- Venue
- Geological Magazine
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2020-09-04
- Volume
- 157
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1933-1938
- ISSN
- 0016-7568 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-5081
- OpenAlex
- W3083519552
- Cited by
- 70
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 12.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Geological Magazine (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Archivio istituzionale della ricerca (Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Royal Holloway, University of London
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Education and Employment
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Inclusion and Disability in Education and Sport
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geology › Geotourism and Geoheritage Conservation
- Keywords
- fieldwork, disability, accessibility, inclusion, geoscience education, field trips, equal opportunities, barriers to participation
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
