Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Inclusive Education for BC’s Students with Disabilities

COVID-19: Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Inclusive Education for Students with Disabilities in British Columbia’s Public Education (K-12) System

Principal Investigator: Jennifer Baumbusch

Funding: Partnership Engage Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

Study Overview:

The overall goals of this project are to:

  1. understand the impact of COVID-19 on inclusive education for students with disabilities and complex learners in British Columbia’s (BC) public education (K-12) system, and
  2. use this new knowledge to inform advocacy activities during subsequent waves of the pandemic, including informing hybrid models across online and in-person learning modalities to provide inclusive education.

There are several specific objectives associated with this goal:

  1. We will identify parents/guardians* and educators’* perspectives on the impact of COVID-19 on inclusive education in BC. (*Update as of Feb, 2021: The parent survey has already been completed; the educator survey is currently underway)
  2. We will develop recommendations for policies and programming to support inclusive education
    during and after COVID-19.
  3. We will use a range of knowledge uptake strategies to communicate our findings to students, parents, educators, and policy/decision-makers in the public-school system.

Ultimately, this project will advance partner organization BCEdAccess‘ leadership role advocating for
inclusive education to the benefit of students with disabilities and complex learners across BC. The
project will be theoretically informed by intersectionality, a perspective that allows us to examine how
social locations shape the perspectives and experiences of those engaged in inclusive education and
avoids homogenizing this into one population.

If you have any questions about our study, we welcome you to contact us via email at: spice@nursing.ubc.ca.