NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: North Slave Region

Tags: disability, childhood, inclusive

Objective(s): To consider how the construction of children and families utilizing services intersects with cultural identities.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No. 6085. The project adopts an Institutional Ethnography approach through annual interviews with families over a 9-year period. This study of institutional practices will draw on more than 800 interviews with families. We then consider how the construction of children and families in these services intersects with cultural identities. For example, we will examine how disability can develop as a cultural experience, into a positive self-concept in adulthood. The project will seek to develop theoretical models of the social networks created by services, families, and the communities in which people live. Our ultimate goal is to inform social policy from the perspective of families, and to create a more complex discourse on early childhood disability that is grounded in a positive understanding of diverse abilities in childhood. Our key methodological approach in this research is Institutional Ethnography (IE). The intention of IE is to understand institutional cultures and practices from a particular viewpoint; in this case the perspective of families. Institutional ethnography is concerned with how “ruling relations” shape everyday lives. Ruling relations are the administrative, managerial, professional, and discursive organization of the regulations, and the governing structures of a society (Smith, 2006 and 2009). These social relations are illuminated through research, which examines the ideology behind the institution, and the processes that are in place to do the work of the institution. “IE is not empirically focused on ‘experience’ or ‘culture’. Instead, it addresses processes of social organization” (Mykhalovskiy & McCoy, 2002).This approach begins with inquiry into lived individual experience and asks the question: “How does the institution work?” Fundamental to the approach is the mapping of how the actual activities of the institution are carried out (Campbell & Gregor, 2008). The methodological approaches that we will use to glean empirical evidence of the ideology, the processes, and the social relations (Graheme, 1998) document the work of early intervention and education for children with disabilities from the standpoint of their families. Recruitment for the project is now complete. Participants that have previously been a part of the study and consented for us to re-contact them, are being reached out to for subsequent interviews. We have various methods of sharing our results. We are partnered with the Yellowknife Women's Centre and through them we will do community presentations, share research briefs, and seek to engage local decision makers to share the findings. We will also share findings with participants, who in our experience find the maps of the their service interactions that we create to be a useful tool for their own advocacy and service navigation. We will also invite local organizations and participants to be part of ongoing project activities in other parts of Canada. We completed a special report on the Yellowknife evacuation of 2023 that was published in 2024. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from: February 07 - December 31, 2025