Enhancing staff attitudes, knowledge and skills in supporting the self-determination of adults with intellectual disability in residential settings in Hong Kong: A pretest-posttest comparison group design

Background: The ecological perspective recognizes the critical role that is played by rehabilitation personnel in helping people with intellectual disability (ID) to exercise self-determination, particularly in residential settings. In Hong Kong, the authors developed the first staff training programme of its kind to strengthen the competence of personnel in this area. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of staff training in enhancing residential staff's attitudes, knowledge and facilitation skills in assisting residents with ID to exercise self-determination. Methods: A pretest-posttest comparison group design was adopted. Thirty-two participants in an experimental group attended a six-session staff training programme. A 34-item self-constructed scale was designed and used for measuring the effectiveness of the staff training. Results: The results showed that the experimental group achieved statistically significant positive changes in all domains, whereas no significant changes were found in the comparison group. Conclusions: The findings provided initial evidence of the effectiveness of staff training that uses an interactional attitude-knowledge-skills model for Chinese rehabilitation personnel. The factors that contributed to its effectiveness were discussed and recommendations for future research were made. © Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.postprin

Improving Supervisor Evaluations Through the Use of Self Determination Contracts

Supervisor perceptions of employee competence in areas of work, social, and personal demands of the job often determine success or failure for the supported employee. This study involved three workers with disabilities who participated in a supported employment program. After being successfully hired in a job of their choosing, problems arose that jeopardized the successful completion of the placement phase. The workers used individualized self-determination contracts to improve supervisor evaluations. Specifically, they completed daily self-determination contracts to plan their work outcomes, manage their tasks, evaluate their performance, and make adjustments for their next opportunity to work. Results indicated that all three workers used self-determination strategies to improve their performance and meet the expectations of their respective employers.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Effect of Intervention With the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction on Access and Goal Attainment

Promoting self-determination has been identified as best practice in special education and transition services and as a means to promote goal attainment and access to the general education curriculum for students with disabilities. There have been, however, limited evaluations of the effects of interventions to promote self-determination on outcomes related to access to the general education curriculum. This article reports findings from a cluster or group-randomized trial control group study examining the impact of intervention using the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction on students’ academic and transition goal attainment and on access to the general education curriculum for students with intellectual disability and learning disabilities. Findings support the efficacy of the model for both goal attainment and access to the general education curriculum, though students varied in the patterns of goal attainment as a function of type of disability.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

From Marginalized to Maximized Opportunities for Diverse Youths With Disabilities: A Position Paper of the Division on Career Development and Transition

Current secondary education and transition practices have created differential education and employment outcomes by gender, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and disability classifications. These differential outcomes result in economic and social marginalization of far too many students with disabilities. Transition education practices need to respond to these differential outcomes and provide targeted, systematic, and long-term opportunities for all students to attain individually and family-determined postschool goals. This position paper recommends an ecological framework for considering the multiple systems that influence transition education and postschool outcomes for diverse youths with disabilities. The authors argue for educators, researchers, and policy makers to attend to social, political, economic, educational, and cultural contexts in developing effective interventions and improving postschool outcomes.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Examining Individual and Instruction-Related Predictors of the Self-Determination of Students With Disabilities: Multiple Regression Analyses

Youngsun Lee, PhD, is an assistant professor of special education in department of education, Inha University, Korea. Her current research interests include self-determination, transition planning, and technology use for secondary students with disabilities.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Establishing a Causal Relationship Between Intervention to Promote Self-Determination and Enhanced Student Self-Determination

Promoting the self-determination of adolescents with disabilities has become best practice in secondary education and transition services, but to date there have been no studies establishing a causal relationship between efforts to promote self-determination and enhancement of the self-determination of youth with disabilities. This article reports a randomized trial placebo control group study of 371 high school students receiving special education services under the categorical areas of mental retardation or learning disabilities. Students were randomly assigned to an intervention or control group (by high school campus), with students in the intervention condition receiving multiple instructional components to promote self-determination. Latent growth curve analysis showed that although all students in the study showed improved self-determination over the 3 years of the study, students in the intervention group showed significantly greater growth, though specific intraindividual variables affected this growth. Implications for research and intervention are discussed.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Disabled students in the performing arts - are we setting them up to succeed?

Professional training opportunities for students with physical and learning disabilities in the performing arts are conceived and developed in the context of government policy initiatives for inclusion and models of disability that aim to ensure that educational provision is of a kind which does not stigmatise individuals or devalue their performance. In this paper, we consider three partnership programmes linking two theatre companies and one dance company with schools that provide high‐level mainstream training. The programmes were planned to offer paths to progression for disabled students, and we examine what the programmes have taught us about the characteristics of inclusive practice in drama and dance training that can set disabled students up to succeed

Effects of teacher-directed versus student-directed instruction on self-management of young children with disabilities.

In this study, students worked independently by setting goals, selecting assignments, and recording and evaluating their results after receiving one of two different types of self-management training. During teacher-directed training, the teacher set goals, assigned work, and recorded and evaluated results for students. During student-directed training, students performed those tasks themselves. The results indicated that students engaged in the self-management behaviors more frequently during independent work following student-directed instruction than following teacher-directed instruction