An Exploration of the Relationships Between Science Identity and Disabled Identities in Undergraduate Science Students

ABSTRACT

Science identity is often conceptualized through constructs such as performance, competence, recognition, and interest, with prior research highlighting the roles of race, gender, and cultural background in shaping students' experiences. However, limited scholarship has examined how disability interacts with science identity in postsecondary science education. This qualitative study explores the relationships between scientific and disabled identities among 21 undergraduate students who self‐identify as disabled and have participated in lab‐based science courses at a public R1 university. Through semi‐structured interviews analyzed using thematic and deductive coding, we examined how students narrate the intersection of these two identities and how dimensions of the prevailing science identity framework manifest across those narratives. Nearly all participants described their identities as oppositional in at least some contexts, with performance and recognition by others, rather than competence, emerging as the dimensions most disrupted by disabling environments. Many also described interactive and parallel relationships, in which disability and science identity shaped one another bidirectionally, and in which skills cultivated through disability—resilience, adaptability, and systems thinking—transferred meaningfully into scientific practice. Fewer participants described overlapping or intersectional relationships, the latter representing the most integrated view of the two identities as mutually constitutive. Across relationship types, structural conditions consistently shaped participants' experiences including the near‐total absence of visible disabled community in science spaces, and the burden of navigating disclosure. These findings extend science identity frameworks to account for disability as a key social dimension, with implications for mentorship, institutional support, and inclusive science education.