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

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

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

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

The relation between choosing and working prevocational tasks in two severely retarded young adults.

This study investigated the relation between prevocational preference, as measured by the client's selection of a task object, and the work that followed that choice. After selecting a task object, the clients worked a task previously assessed to be more or less preferred than the one indicated by the object. The results indicated that when the selection represented a task that was less preferred than the one actually worked, choices for that object increased on subsequent trials. Conversely, when the selection represented a task that was more preferred than the task subject actually worked, choices for the object decreased on subsequent trials. The work that followed object choices reinforced or punished subsequent selections. These findings indicated that the clients' object choices were valid indicators of their preference for working different tasks. They were also consistent with Premack's principle that one class of responses may reinforce or punish a different class of responses for the same individual

The validation of procedures to assess prevocational task preferences in retarded adults.

Three severely retarded young adults between the ages of 19 and 21 years participated in a prevocational training program, and worked regularly on six different tasks during the scheduled six-hour day. The study attempted to assess each subject's preferences for the six tasks: collating, stuffing, sorting, pulley assembly, flour-sifter assembly, and circuit-board stuffing. In Phase I, the procedure consisted of randomly pairing each task with all other tasks in a two-choice situation that required the subjects to select one task from each pair combination to work for a seven-minute period. The selection procedure consisted of presenting two representative task objects on a tray and requesting the subject to pick up one object and place it on the work table. The object selected represented the task worked for that period. The 15 possible pair combinations were presented randomly every two days for a period of 34 days to determine the preferences. During the validation phase (Phase II), each subject's least- and most-preferred tasks were paired separately with moderately-preferred tasks. As expected, these manipulations confirmed the baseline data, as choices for the moderately-preferred tasks decreased when consistently paired with the preferred tasks and increased when consistently paired with the least-preferred tasks

Employing task arrangements and verbal contingencies to promote verbalizations between retarded children.

This study investigated the effects of arranging task events for interdependence, to increase the probability of social responding. During task interdependence, the subjects, participating in dyads and a four-person group, obtained task materials (a puzzle piece) from their partner before completing their task (appropriately placing the puzzle piece). The verbal contingency required a verbal request to precede a subject's receiving a task material from his partner. The verbal contingency yoked with task interdependence made task completion contingent on the appropriate verbalization. The findings from two experiments suggested that task interdependence was sufficient to increase partner-directed verbalizations for three of the four subjects. When the verbal contingency was added, all subjects increased their requests and other verbalizations to partner. Applied to a four-person group, the verbal contingency yoked with varying levels of task interdependence correspondingly affected the pattern and level of group communications. The greater the task interdependence, i.e., the more members each subject depended on to complete his task, the more complex the social network of verbal contacts, and the higher the level of both requests and other verbalizations for the group