About
The Project
Education and decent work are human rights. By exploring change in post-secondary education systems, we believe we can help young students with disabilities realize these rights.
This project is enabling three major disability organizations and three Canadian universities to collaborate with Eviance in an effective partnership. Together we are examining new ways of thinking about and measuring the quality of post-secondary education and employment for young adults with disabilities. Based on this new knowledge, partners are discovering and pointing towards more effective policies and practices.
Our approach
This project uses an intersectional and reflexive human rights approach. Intersectionality is a research and policy practice which reveals the complex interactions among multiple social categories (e.g., gender, Indigenous person status, racialization, class, culture, age, ability, sexuality) and the systems and processes of domination and oppression (e.g., sexism, racism, classism, colonialism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, sanism). These can simultaneously produce experiences of discrimination and privilege. Reflexivity means attending to the context and processes of knowledge construction and facilitating the time and space to listen, share and co-create rights-based solutions together.
The project is inclusive and community focused in its partnerships with disability organizations and their affiliates that further the human rights and postsecondary education of people with disabilities, and with the universities who are committed to working in partnership with these organizations and Eviance.
Intersectional, reflexive, inclusive and community-focused
Our goals
The goals of our initiative are to:
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Address and close the knowledge gaps of key stakeholders in PSE on universal and inclusive design for learning (UIDL), instructional excellence, and student support
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Undertake research on effective inclusive and universal design practices in PSE
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Conduct research on the quality of employment that PSE students and graduates obtain
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Create and share information about innovative practices which are strong predictors of good-quality and decent work for PSE students and graduates with disabilities
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Generate and distribute digital resources for collaboration on UIDL for PSE excellence in diversity
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Foster partnerships and collaborations across Canadian universities, colleges, and community-based organizations in order to operationalize SDGs, and
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Establish an accountability and monitoring framework that PSE institutions can use to track the quality of PSE and decent work after PSE.
Comprehensive review of the scholarly literature on success factors in post-secondary education and employment for young adults with disabilities.
Literature Review
Extensive mining of the Canadian Survey on Disability on the quality of students with disabilities’ post-secondary education and employment.
Data Analysis
A brief survey on the post-secondary and employment experiences of students with disabilities at partnering universities.
Student Survey
Two National Social Labs to examine and spread effective practices.
Social Labs
Development of an evaluative framework for post-secondary schools to use for improving the inclusivity and quality of their educational and other programs.
Evaluative Framework
Funding for this project provided by the Government of Canada’s Sustainable Development Goals Funding Program.