“I Don’t Feel Anxious [Talking] to You”: Inclusive Methodologies for Researching the Educational and Vocational Experiences of University Students with Disability

Abstract

AbstractQuality career development learning (CDL) is critical to support the lives and careers of people with disability who experience lower employment rates (Australian Human Rights Commission, Willing to work: National inquiry into employment discrimination against older Australians and Australians with disability, Australian Human Rights Commission, 2016), underrepresentation in post-school education (Ranasinghe, Chew, Knight, & Siekmann, 2019), and weaker graduate outcomes (QILT. (2021). 2021 Graduate Outcomes Survey. Victoria, Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching.). Research which is inclusive, accessible and framed critically is urgently required in order to understand what best practise CDL support looks like for this group of individuals. At the same time, there is a need for a disability inclusive response to the physical distancing restrictions imposed on research by COVID-19. The aim of this chapter is to discuss how research methods, made accessible by technologies, were employed to explore the educational and vocational experiences of university students with disability. Through an analysis of interview video recordings, interviewer reflections, and email correspondence with participants, the chapter highlights how the needs of students with disability interacted with, and were accommodated in, research processes to enable data collection. Specifically, the chapter discusses the invisible but critical recruitment and rapport-building work required to engage students with disability in research, and the use of videoconferencing as an enabler of research participation. The discussion concludes by offering suggestions as to how inclusive virtual methods can be successfully applied in future CDL and social science research.