As a research unit within the College of Education, the largest percentage of CDS funding (about 40 percent) comes from research projects. CDS’ quantitative and qualitative research efforts are responsive to federal and state initiatives.
2017-2018 Highlights
- CDS continues work on three STEM (Project TEAMS, Ka Pilina Noʻeau, Project BEAM) projects to explore how to ensure underrepresented groups (individuals with disabilities, Native Hawaiians, Native Americans, Pacific Islander, and Hispanics) are exposed to, access, and demonstrate STEM proficiency in elementary, middle school, and high school, and pursue it as a major in college.
- CDS, through the Jobs Now Partnership (a five-year grant), has launched a pilot project with multiple agencies’ related to parent engagement as a tool to increase the likelihood that high school students with developmental/intellectual disabilities will secure employment at a competitive wage in an integrated setting or pursue higher education and then find a job at a competitive wage in an integrated setting. Through this grant we are developing new options for cross-agency planning in addition to conducting a pilot with individuals using an evidence-based process. The final piece of our project will be to provide the state legislature with a proposal to take the results from the pilot statewide.
- CDS has completed ten years of research about how to equip teachers with best practices related to educating English language learners from the outer Pacific Islands and pursuing the development of online PD courses based on our experience.
- CDS is working with young, Native Hawaiian children, with and without disabilities, to learn how to work in teams, write scripts, and make simple videos with their own avatar, to illustrate science concepts on iPads.
- CDS is continuing its work to help individuals with disabilities who are leaving hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, group living situations to return to community residential living of their choice with appropriate supports.
- CDS, continues its partnership with faculty in the School of Communications, to use an app it developed to audio-describe brochures for state and national parks. This work is being done in collaboration with the American Council for the Blind, with funding from Google.
- CDS continued its investment in promoting adoption of visitability standards in residential housing. We drafted four bills for the legislature. One made it all the way to the last days of the legislature, but it to failed. It would have required the incorporation of visitability standards in all publicly financed housing in Hawai‘i.