The Self-Advocacy and Student Success Project (SASS)
In November 2025, Dr. Faith partnered with three school boards, three community organizations, and three scholars at three universities to create a three year research and development plan related to student self-advocacy. We are currently applying for SSHRC Partnership Development Grant funding to provide for research assistants and teacher release to support our plan. You can be involved! You can:
- Read the summary, below.
- Add your name to the updates list. We’ll send you a 1 pager every time we learn something we think you can use to support student self-advocacy. We’ll also let you know if we have something bigger to share – either a document or an opportunity.
- Check back here to read the project blog.
Blog Updates List
Summary
No two children share the same skills. One classroom can include a strong reader, a student anxious in groups, a talkative child, a student who fears math, and one still learning English. To handle academic and social challenges, these students must develop self-regulated learning (SRL) skills including the ability to set goals, select and use strategies that fit their strengths, and persist through obstacles. Two main interventions support SRL in schools. All students receive ongoing encouragement from teachers to plan, use strategies, and persist: “Why are we struggling? What can we try? What worked before?” When this universal support is not enough, an individual education plan (IEP) helps identify personal learning resources, set individual goals, select appropriate strategies, and track progress. However, effective SRL implementation requires knowledge, skills, understanding, and time that teachers and students often lack. Teachers may struggle to fit in daily check-ins with students; diverse strengths can be overshadowed by ableist or deficit-based assumptions; discussions about barriers may trigger shame; and competitive cultures may discourage reflection and collaboration. As a result, universal teacher-facilitated SRL support can become overly adult-directed, and even individualized IEPs can position students as recipients of adult made plans with the effects of deprioritizing student autonomy, agency, and engagement, ultimately undermining opportunities for the development of genuine SRL.
The Self-Advocacy and Student Success (SASS) project aims to build capacity in teacher-learner communities to engage in both daily, universal SRL support and IEP processes. Guided by the social justice principle, “Nothing about us without us,” a robust three-cycle research and development process will draw on the lived expertise of students, teachers, and disability community members to refine a modular intervention aligned with classroom priorities and resources, student needs, and teachers’ limited time. Through a systematic evidence review and partner consultations, we will identify effective, adaptable approaches for building SRL skills, which will be integrated into a co-developed intervention by our team of researchers, practitioners, and partners. This SASS intervention will undergo two pilot and refinement cycles, resulting in a classroom-ready, equity-oriented SRL intervention that is credible, scalable, and context-responsive. The project will culminate with strategic knowledge sharing powered by the considerable dissemination capacity of our partners.
The project brings together researchers from OISE with expertise in SRL and clinical measurement, and a Queen’s University researcher specializing in IEPs. Three educational partners (Algonquin & Lakeshore Catholic District School Board, Limestone District School Board, and EDVANCE — an association of private schools) along with Autism Ontario and the Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario, will connect the project with students, teachers, and families contributing lived expertise to the intervention’s design and evaluation. Collaborators including a disability justice scholar from York University, an Ontario education leader, and a representative from Inclusion Action Ontario (an advocacy organization for students with complex medical needs) will provide high-level external feedback. Grounded in genuine partnership, the project will deliver a powerful, class-room ready intervention aligned with IEP timelines, feasible for diverse classrooms, and designed to create SRL-ready learning environments that fulfill education’s long-standing promise to foster growth, enable all children to overcome challenges, and promote excellence.