REACH: Pathways to Education

Building the Foundation for an International Research Partnership

Purpose

Pathways to Education: Understanding the Educational Experiences of Refugee Children with Dis/abilities was the research project through which the REACH partnership was established. The project brought together researchers, educators, practitioners, community partners, and students across countries to better understand the educational experiences of refugee children with dis/abilities across diverse cultural, institutional, and national contexts.

Beyond investigating these experiences, the project was designed to establish the relationships, international research capacity, and collaborative infrastructure needed for sustained research across countries and disciplines.

Award

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
Partnership Development Grant
Project: Pathways to Education: Understanding the Educational Experiences of Refugee Children with Dis/abilities
Grant Number: 890-2020-0136
Award: $199,772 CAD

This project established the research partnership that subsequently developed into the Global Relational Futures Consortium (GRFC), operating publicly as the REACH Global Initiative. The documented award value was $199,772 CAD.

Founding Institutional Partners

The original Partnership Development Grant was built around collaboration among three core institutional partners:

• Simon Fraser University, Canada
• Khalel Dosmukhamedov Atyrau University, Kazakhstan
• Yarmouk University, Jordan

As the project developed, the research network expanded beyond these founding institutions to include researchers, practitioners, students, and collaborators from additional countries and organizations.

Major Activities

The Partnership Development Grant combined partnership building with collaborative research and international knowledge mobilization. Activities included:

• collaborative research examining the educational experiences of refugee children with dis/abilities across different contexts;
• development of an international and interdisciplinary research network;
• three international research symposia;
• collaborative conference presentations and scholarly publications;
• additional partner-led research projects emerging from the original partnership;
• student research, mentorship, and opportunities for emerging scholars; and
• ongoing international dialogue concerning how concepts such as disability, inclusion, educational need, and appropriate support are understood across different contexts.

Key Outputs

Since the conclusion of the original Partnership Development Grant, REACH had developed into a substantial international research partnership comprising:

22 individual partners across 7 countries
3 institutional partners
5 additional research projects
3 international research symposia
15 conference presentations across 5 countries
18 academic papers, including 16 published and 2 under review

These activities established an international network capable of generating collaborative research while also creating the relationships and intellectual foundations for subsequent REACH projects.

Selected publications and research outputs are available on the REACH Selected Publications & Research Outputs page.

What We Learned

One of the most important outcomes of the project was a shift in how the partnership understood the research problem itself.

Although the original project focused specifically on refugee children identified as having dis/abilities, international collaboration demonstrated that concepts such as disability, inclusion, educational need, vulnerability, and appropriate support are understood, identified, and operationalized differently across cultural, institutional, and national contexts.

Formal disability identification could be unavailable, inconsistent, culturally inappropriate, or stigmatizing, while many forcibly displaced children and youth experienced substantial educational, linguistic, relational, health-related, and migration-related complexity without holding a formally recognized disability designation.

These findings shifted REACH away from relying primarily on categorical definitions and toward a more relational and contextual understanding of inclusion and complexity. They also contributed to the development of the Comparative International Framework of Inclusive Education (CIFIE), which examines how understandings of inclusive education are shaped through interacting biological-social, relational-contextual, and flexible-systemic dimensions.

What Came Next

The original Partnership Development Grant did more than produce a series of individual studies. It created the international relationships and research infrastructure from which REACH's subsequent program of research developed.

The partnership's findings and questions contributed to several subsequent directions:

Comparative International Framework of Inclusive Education (CIFIE)
International differences encountered during the original research led partners to examine how concepts such as inclusion and disability could be understood relationally across contexts rather than treated as fixed or universally equivalent categories.

Transformative Education for Refugee Children and Youth
A subsequent SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant examined international evidence concerning educational and psychosocial programs supporting refugee children and youth. The synthesis reinforced the importance of relational, strength-based, community-oriented, and contextually responsive approaches and highlighted substantial variability across programs and implementation contexts.

Community-Engaged Research and Woven Futures
Subsequent exploratory and community-engaged projects moved the partnership from understanding problems toward collaboratively developing and studying practical approaches with youth and community partners. This work eventually contributed to the Woven Futures family of projects in Canada and internationally.

The Global Relational Futures Consortium
As its membership, research, and international collaborations expanded, the original REACH partnership evolved into the Global Relational Futures Consortium (GRFC), operating publicly as the REACH Global Initiative, providing a broader structure for multiple interconnected and independent programs of research.

A New Partnership Question
The original PDG asked whether an international and interdisciplinary partnership could be built to better understand the experiences of refugee children with dis/abilities. That partnership was successfully established.

The next question is different: How can an established transnational research partnership work inclusively, reciprocally, and effectively across substantially different cultural, linguistic, institutional, political, and resource contexts?

That question now informs the next stage of REACH's partnership research.