Transition from school to the world of post secondary education, employment and all other adult activities can be one of the most critical aspects in the lives of young people. During this transition, one must learn to be independent on all aspects of...
Transition from school to the world of post secondary education, employment and all other adult activities can be one of the most critical aspects in the lives of young people. During this transition, one must learn to be independent on all aspects of his/her life. It is during this period that outcomes of special education must be maximized and the quality of the educational services must be evaluated. For students with disabilities related to learning difficulties, psychological or behavioral problems, effective transition can only be achieved when comprehensive, systematic and concrete supports are planed and provided.
As an educational approach regarding independence and self-efficacy is in great need, self-determination came to the center of attention especially including the issue of transition from school to work and community living. Promoting the self-determination for students with disabilities has became a central part of the issues regarding transition service programs. In specific, development of effective curricular and instructional strategies to facilitate self-determination was a major task of the previous researches and still requires further investigation. Based on this need for investigation, the current study was conducted to develop a program for self-determination activity and test the effects of the program on improvement of the level of self-determination among high school students with mild disabilities.
The participants of the current study were 30 students with mild disabilities in secondary special schools: 15 students were placed in the experimental group and the other 15 were in the control group. The self-determination activity program, as the intervention, was applied to the experimental group only. That is, the control group did not receive the self-determination activity program. The experimental procedure was composed of pre-test, intervention, and post-test. The experiment was conducted 2-3 times per week for the total of 30 sessions for 3 month period.
The self-determination activity program as the intervention in the current study was developed on the basis of self-determination learning model which was composed of self-determination, self-regulated problem-solving process, and student-centered learning activities. The program developed in the current study consisted of 4 steps: self-exploration, goal setting, planning, action and adjusting. AIR Self-Determination Scale (Wolman, Campeau, DuBois, Mithaug, & Stolarski, 1994) was employed to determine any change in the level of self-determination between pre-test and post-test. This pre-and-post test control group design was employed to test the effects of the intervention program. T-test was employed to test the effect of the self-determination activity program for students with mild disabilities in the transition period.
The results from the current study may be summarized as follows:
1. According to the teacher evaluation, improvement on the level of self-determination was statistically more significant in the experimental group than in the control group after the self-determination activity program was applied. Both capacities and opportunites for self-determination were significantly higher in the experimental group than the control group.
2. According to the student evaluation, improvement on the level of self-determination was statistically more significant in the experimental group than in the control group after the self-determination activity program was applied. Self-determining behaviors, awareness, and opportunities for self-determination in both schools and home settings were evaluated as significantly better in the experimental group than in the control group.
3. According to the parent evaluation, improvement on the level of self-determination, specifically self-determining behaviors and opportunities in both schools and home settings, was statistically more significant in the experimental group than in the control group after the self-determination activity program was applied.
Findings from the current study demonstrate that the program for self-determination activity had an effect on improving self-determination for students with disabilities during transition period. The findings from the current study further suggest that comprehensive and systematic educational programs for facilitating self-determination should be continuously developed and applied in order to establish effective transition from school to adult lives that are independent and self-efficient.