The Role of Identity Formation and Career Indecisiveness in Effective School-to-Work Transitions for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities
Many school districts devote the majority of their transition resources to those students that are graduating and continuing their education through college. However, only about 15% of ninth grade students go on to graduate high school and obtain a 4-year college degree within six years of their high school graduation. Schools focus their resources and curriculum on the college bound minority instead of the work bound majority. This contributes to ineffective transition planning for those students going directly from school to work; and is especially true for students with Emotional/Behavioral disabilities (ED/BD). These students are leaving school unprepared to be gainfully employed because of a lack of knowledge about themselves, their abilities, and the abilities needed to be successful in a chosen career. Many of these adolescents have not had the opportunity to explore career options through school sponsored work experiences or self motivated exploration, which contributes to their indecisiveness about their futures and the lack of a clearly formed identity. This study investigated the role of identity diffusion and career indecision in effective transition planning for students with emotional and behavioral disturbances (ED/BD). It was hypothesized that ED/BD students will have more career indecision and identity diffusion than students who are not receiving special education services
