Framing the Future

In 1990, I was hired to direct a federally funded model demonstration project to develop a curriculum to promote the self-determination of adolescents with intellectual disability. Eventually, the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), would fund 26 projects to promote self-determination (Wehmeyer, 1999). From the first publication from that project (Wehmeyer, 1992) to today, I have had the unique opportunity to watch an idea take root and grow, from an untested hypothesis—that students with disabilities will achieve more positive school and post-school outcomes if they are more self-determined—to an evidence-based practice. There were times along the way that I thought a focus on promoting self-determination would be one of any number of policy-driven fads that had its moment in the sun, then faded away. However, for a number of reasons—research findings, policy directives, advocacy initiatives—this was not the case and, as I see it, in the early years of the 21st century, the field hit a tipping point in which student self-determination became an accepted variable that moderated and mediated important school and adult-life outcomes for students with disabilities.

Self-determination is a

dispositional characteristic manifested as acting as the causal agent in one’s life. Self-determined people (i.e., causal agents) act in service to freely chosen goals. Self-determined actions function to enable a person to be the causal agent is his or her life. (Shogren et al., in press)

People who are causal agents make or cause things to happen in their lives. That we are at this place at this time with regard to issues pertaining to self-determination is the result of a process involving research: (a) establishing that students with disabilities were less self-determined than their peers (Wehmeyer & Metzler, 1995), (b) devising assessments to drive research and intervention evaluation (Wehmeyer, 1996), (c) developing interventions to promote self-determination and educationally valued outcomes (Wehmeyer, Palmer, Agran, Mithaug, & Martin, 2000), (d) determining teacher implementation of practices linked to self-determination (Wehmeyer, Agran, & Hughes, 2000), (e) establishing a relationship between self-determination and more positive outcomes for youth (Wehmeyer & Palmer, 2003), (f) establishing the role of promoting self-determination in school reform (Wehmeyer, Field, Doren, Jones, & Mason, 2004), and (g) showing a causal link between promoting self-determination and more positive school and post-school outcomes (Shogren, Palmer, Wehmeyer, Williams-Diehm, & Little, 2012).

I use research conducted by myself and my colleagues to illustrate this progression, but of course, there were many others making equally important contributions to knowledge and practice in self-determination over this time (Algozzine, Browder, Karvonen, Test, & Wood, 2001; Carter, Lane, Pierson, & Glaeser, 2006; Cobb, Lehmann, Newman-Gonchar, & Morgen, 2009; Field, Sarver, & Shaw, 2003; Fowler, Konrad, Walker, Test, & Wood, 2007; Stancliffe, Abery, & Smith, 2000; Ward & Meyer, 1999; Zhang, 2001). I cannot capture the contributions of colleagues with whom I have worked in the space allotted to me, more or less the important contributions of the many other researchers who have contributed to the knowledge base.

So, that is the first of the points to make with regard to the most significant advances in the area of promoting the self-determination of children and youth with disabilities; we have as strong an evidence base for the importance of self-determination to successful school and post-school outcomes as we have for any “transition”-related practice. In the past several years, findings from large, randomized trial studies of efforts to promote self-determination with adolescents with disabilities have established a causal effect (with multiple interventions) on (a) student involvement in educational planning (Martin et al., 2006; Wehmeyer, Palmer, Lee, Williams-Diehm, & Shogren, 2011), (b) enhanced self-determination (Palmer, Wehmeyer, Shogren, Williams-Diehm, & Soukup, 2012; Wehmeyer, Palmer, Shogren, Williams-Diehm, & Soukup, 2012; Wehmeyer, Shogren, et al., 2012), (c) access to the general education curriculum and educational goal attainment (Shogren et al., 2012), and (d) more positive employment and community inclusion outcomes (Powers et al., 2012; Shogren et al., in press).

This leads to my second point and the points I will make with regard to next steps. Despite this knowledge, all available evidence suggests that efforts to promote self-determination remain fringe activities, occurring only when a dedicated educator or administrator decides to elevate such efforts to the forefront (Eisenman & Chamberlin, 2001; Sands, Spencer, Gliner, & Swaim, 1999; Thoma, Pannozzo, Fritton, & Bartholomew, 2008; Wehmeyer, Agran, et al., 2000; Wehmeyer & Schwartz, 1998).

Why is this so? There are many reasons, but among them is not that promoting self-determination is not relevant to educational school reform; it clearly is. It is in the context of school reform efforts that I situate the points I make with regard to next steps in improving educational outcomes for youth for whom typical instruction is not effective by promoting self-determination. First, of course, we need more research and intervention development efforts, but we need to do so in the context of all students, and not only students with disabilities. As the field moves toward multi-tiered systems of supports (MTSS) models that emphasize high quality interventions for all students in the context of the general education curriculum and classroom, interventions to promote self-determination should be among those Tier 1 interventions implemented. To achieve this, we need assessments that measure the self-determination of all students, and not just students with disabilities. My colleagues and I are currently evaluating a new assessment that will meet that demand, and as we engage into the next decade’s work, it will be, increasingly, focused on promoting the self-determination of all students, including students with disabilities, in typical school settings and contexts.

I have come to believe, however, that evidence of efficacy is necessary but not sufficient. Why is it that practice to promote self-determination remains limited and often tied to a single teacher or administrator who prioritizes such efforts? In part, I think it is because of how disability itself is understood within the field. For most of the history of the field, “special education” has been used not as the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has defined it (specially designed instruction) but as an adjective, to describe a student (she is a special education student) or a place (he goes to special education; Wehmeyer, in press). Unfortunately, we are now hearing educators referring to students as a “Tier 3 student” (Shogren, Wehmeyer, Lane, & Quick, 2014) in the same manner.

If we continue to view disability using models that emphasize deficits, I believe that efforts to promote self-determination will remain marginalized. So, as a second point in next steps, we, as a field, need to embrace strengths-based models of disability. Increasingly around the world, disability is being framed not as a defect within a person but as a gap between the person’s strengths and the demands of the environment or context (Shogren et al., in press). Educational efforts utilizing such models focus on reducing that gap by enhancing personal capacity and modifying the environment. Fortunately, innovative intervention models in schools—including MTSS (and its component parts, Positive Behavior Supports and Response to Intervention) and Universal Design for Learning—are predicated on these social ecological models of disability, focusing on reducing the gap between personal capacity and the demands of the environment by enhancing the former (capacities) and modifying the latter (contexts). That it is students who are referred to as “Tier 2” or “Tier 3” and not interventions illustrates the fact that when we approach innovative practices with an old and outdated understanding of disability, we simply repeat the sins of the past. And, because promoting self-determination and student-directed learning is at the heart of strengths-based educational efforts, the continuation of old ways of understanding disability will, ultimately, work to keep efforts to promote self-determination at the margins.

There are numerous other “next steps” that warrant more consideration than space allows. It is clear that there is still confusion in the field pertaining to how practitioners understand the construct. I have talked with school personnel who indicated that they had tried self-determination, but “it didn’t work.” On further exploration, it was clear that they had implemented a particular version of a student involvement program that, for whatever reason, did not fit in that school district. Self-determination is too often equated only with making a choice or running an Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting, instead of more accurately with acting volitionally, making things happen in one’s life, and being the causal agent in one’s life. This is as much a function, I think, of our teacher preparation system as anything else. It is my sense that teachers-to-be receive limited instruction on what it means to promote self-determination and how to do so, and that teachers preparing to work with some populations of students receive almost no such instruction. Research suggests that one of the primary ways that teachers learn about self-determination is by attending sessions at conferences. While it’s positive they are getting the message there, there many teachers who are not able to attend conferences.

All in all, however, I want to end my comments on a positive note. True, there is much yet to do . . . that is both good news and bad news. That, 25 years after the OSEPmodel demonstration initiative, efforts to promote self-determination are accepted as effective practice in the field and that there are evidence-based practices that support teachers to achieve this is very good news indeed. I believe that the present time, with the emergence of MTSS and whole school efforts to promote inclusion and quality education, provides unique opportunities to infuse efforts to promote self-determination into the curriculum for all students, not excluding students with disabilities.