A visual ethnographic pilot study of school travel for families living with childhood disability

ABSTRACT

Children’s school transport has become a major research focus over the past 20 years, particularly within the fields of planning, transport geography, and children’s geographies. However, this work has rarely considered children living with disability. This article presents the pilot component of a visual ethnographic study about school transport within families living with childhood disability. It explains why we piloted the study, details the pilot process, and presents lessons learned from piloting the study with two families of children living with different mobility needs. The lessons largely concern the design of interview guides and the interviewing process, as well as the development of an adaptive photo kit to enable children’s independent participation. The article shows how piloting qualitative studies, particularly those involving disabled children, can be invaluable in terms of improving data collection technologies and logistics, as well as enabling inclusive participation.

KEYWORDS:

• School transportation
• pilot study
• photovoice
• ethnography
• childhood
• disability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 That is, children living with complex chronic conditions, functional limitations, and requiring specialized care (Cohen and Patel 2014).

2 For example, we drew upon Smith’s (1987) notion of ‘ruling relations’, institutional ethnography’s generous concept of work (DeVault and McCoy 2006), and paid attention to both ‘processing interchanges’ (Wilson and Pence 2006) and intertextuality (Smith 2005, 2006).

3 The researcher’s presence during families’ morning routines could have produced problems by frustrating the family during a hurried time of day and altering how they get ready for and go to school.

4 To develop this mount, we worked with Tecla (gettecla.com), a company that offers assistive devices that enable people with upper-body mobility impairments to access smart devices.

5 Children with SMA can be susceptible to recurrent respiratory infections; in turn, a common cold may cause more serious health issues.

6 They may need to juggle parent work schedules; overnight nurse, personal support worker, and bus driver schedules; their child(ren)’s school/activity schedules and medical appointments; and spend time resolving administrative issues concerning their child’s access and inclusion.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant #430-2016-00254]; The Hospital for Sick Children Norman Saunders Complex Care Initiative Grant; and the Hospital for Sick Children Centre for Healthy and Active Kids.