A bridge or a ledge? The bidirectional relationship between vocational education and training and disability

ABSTRACT

Although prior research reveals varying levels of inequality in post-secondary attainment for individuals with disabilities, vocational education and training (VET) appears to be more accessible for this group in Canada. Measures of accessibility become more complex, however, when they consider a bidirectional relationship that emphasizes education as a critical juncture that is associated with the later likelihood of developing a disability. The following study deepens insight into VET attainment among people with disabilities by exploring how credential rates differ by disability severity, type, source, and timing. A series of multinomial logistic regression models that examine different operationalisations of disability status demonstrate that greater VET attainment rates for individuals with disabilities are, in part, due to the increased risk of a work-related injury or illness and/or the development of a disability after the completion of education. Nevertheless, compared to attainment at the university degree level, VET is more accessible across different types of disabilities and at higher severity levels. The implications arising from this study suggest that coarsened measures of disability status often obscure the bidirectional nature of educational inequality, from the increased risk of developing a disability at certain levels of education to greater barriers for specific conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational attainment
• VET
• vertical stratification
• DSQ
• disability
• Canada

Acknowledgement

Earlier drafts of this article received excellent feedback from Janine Jongbloed, Chris Nichols, Katherine Wall, and anonymous reviewers. The author would like to thank these individuals for their valuable contributions and encouragement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It is important from the onset to define disability. Although the definition of disability varies by theoretical perspective (Donoghue 2003), from a social model it can be defined as ‘a difficulty in functioning at the body, person, or societal levels, in one or more life domains, as experienced by an individual with a health condition in interaction with contextual factors’ (Leonardi et al. 2006, 1220). Following the United Nations 2006), this article also uses ‘person first language.’ However, it is important to emphasise that some disability activists suggest the term ‘disabled people/persons’ places important emphasise on social context, which may be ‘more “disabling” through valuing certain abilities over others’ (Kattari, Lavery, and Hasche 2017, 868).

2. This contribution takes a comparative rather than a process-based framework for understanding educational inequality (see Lambert et al. 2016 for a discussion of both frameworks). That is, it examines inequality across social groups by comparing attainment levels and does not generate substantial insight into what produces and sustains this form of inequality – an important aspect that is well documented in other research, especially quantitative contributions (e.g. Hong 2015).

3. The Labour Market Agreements for Persons with Disabilities was recently consolidated as part of the Workforce Development Agreements in Canada; however, it still provides funding that promotes training for individuals with disabilities with the explicit aim of supporting greater labour force participation among this group.

4. Securing access to the confidential microdata was granted through a peer-reviewed application adjudicated by Statistics Canada prior to beginning this project. This application for access ensures abidance with all requirements and standards associated with research using microdata, including the Canadian Tri-Agency Framework for responsible research.

5. For detailed information on development and reliability of the DSQ and comparability with similar surveys (e.g. Heath Utilities Index Mark 3 and the Washington Group questions) see Grondin (2016).

6. However, developmental disabilities are excluded from this operationalisation and are based on receiving a diagnosis.

7. The model development phase assessed two model assumptions: each nominal attainment category does not impact the effect of independent variables in other categories; and 2) attainment categories are distinguishable. Independence of irrelevant alternative tests were non-significant, indicating the first assumption was not violated, and Wald tests assessing whether two outcomes could be combined were all significant, indicating combining categories was not necessary.

8. The continuous measure of disability severity level is standardized in Table 1 to ease interpretation (i.e. how each standard deviation increase in severity score increases the RRR).

9. Although the underlying multinomial logistic regression model is based on the full range in disability severity scores, the range visualised is truncated due to the small number of respondents with disability severity scored between 0.5 and 0.7.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Postdoctoral Fellowship [756-2017-0359].