In the years following high school, youth, including youth with extensive support needs, aspire to pursue a range of personally important experiences, such as attending postsecondary education programs, obtaining competitive employment, and living independently. However, the level of disability continues to be a powerful predictor of the degree to…

The Self-Determination Inventory: Student Report (SDI:SR) was developed to address a need in the field for tools to assess self-determination that are aligned with current best practices in assessment development and administration, and emerging research and best practices in promoting self-determination. The present study explored patterns of…

Since the passage of Public Law 94-142, federal law has prioritized the education of students with disabilities with their non-disabled peers in the context of the general education classroom. This chapter examines the progress, and often lack thereof, with regard to educating students with extensive and pervasive support needs in inclusive…

The Self-Determination Inventory: Student Report (SDI:SR) is a newly developed measure of self-determination. The purpose of this study was to explore of personal factors, namely age and gender on scores on the SDI:SR. Separate multigroup confirmatory analyses were conducted for age cohorts (13- to 15-, 16- to 18-, and 19- to 22-year-olds) and for…

The field of transition--and the Division on Career Development and Transition (DCDT)--was built upon a foundation established by theories of career development that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s and paved the way for the work/study movement of the 1960s and the vocational and career education for students with disabilities movement that…

Michael Wehmeyer, a leading scholar with over four decades of experience as a teacher, teacher educator, researcher, and advocate, provides a cogent but accessible account of the evolution of special education. Offering a compelling vision of where the field should be headed in the next decade, he notes how the digital revolution has made it…

This chapter describes the importance of self-determination for transitions and supports for adults with disabilities. Self-determination is defined and its application to the disability context examined, followed by an overview of a multicomponent model to engage adults with disabilities to self-regulate problem solving to set and attain life and…

This study examined the convergent validity of the "Supports Intensity Scale-Adult Version" (SIS-A; Thompson et al., 2015a) and "Supports Intensity Scale-Children's Version" (SIS-C; Thompson et al., 2016a). Data from SISOnline (n = 129,864) for the SIS-A and from the SIS-C standardization sample (n = 4,015) were used for…

This study examined the convergent validity of the "Supports Intensity Scale-Adult Version" (SIS-A; Thompson et al., 2015a) and "Supports Intensity Scale-Children's Version" (SIS-C; Thompson et al., 2016a). Data from SISOnline (n = 129,864) for the SIS-A and from the SIS-C standardization sample (n = 4,015) were used for…

Schools are increasingly exploring the implementation of multitiered systems of support. This article reviews the literature pertaining to efforts to promote self-determination to provide initial direction as to how interventions and supports to promote self-determination could be implemented within a tiered framework. The intent is to provide…

This paper introduces Causal Agency Theory, an extension of the functional model of self-determination. Causal Agency Theory addresses the need for interventions and assessments pertaining to selfdetermination for all students and incorporates the significant advances in understanding of disability and in the field of positive psychology since the…

Promoting student self-determination is recognized as a key component of effective transition supports and services for youth with disabilities. This study examined differences in teacher perceptions of student capacity and opportunity for self-determination over the course of an academic year based on teacher assignment to a treatment group that…

There is an established and still-growing evidence base that promoting self-determination has positive school and post-school benefits for students with disabilities, and yet efforts to do so remain sporadic, at best. This article examines the evidence that promoting self-determination is critically important for students with disabilities,…

This article reports the results of a follow-up analysis of 779 students with disabilities who participated in group-randomized, control group studies designed to examine the efficacy of self-determination interventions in secondary school to examine the relationship between self-determination status when exiting high school and adult outcomes 1…

The Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction (SDLMI) has been identified as an evidence-based practice to support educators to teach students with disabilities to engage in self-regulated learning leading to enhanced self-determination, attainment of academic and functional goals, and enhanced access to the general education curriculum. This…