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Article Excerpt
Existing research has documented disparate outcomes between young women and men with disabilities in many transition domains, including employment, postsecondary education, and parenting. Similarly, students with learning disabilities (LD) have unique postsecondary transition needs. Promoting self-determination and active participation in transition is recommended in practice regardless of gender and disability type. Because both gender and disability status impact the postsecondary trajectories of young adults, helping young women with LD meet the demands of adulthood, including responding to opportunities for self-determination, is a salient issue. Using qualitative interview data and analysis, this study examined the perceptions of adolescent females with LD regarding self-determination during transition. Findings indicated that participants perceived they were self-determining individuals, yet several key component skills necessary for self-determination were missing. Connections to practice and future research are presented.
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Adolescent girls with learning disabilities (LD), particularly those who are from groups outside the dominant European American, English-speaking, middle and high socioeconomic income brackets, face unique challenges to postsecondary achievement and success. An analysis of the postsecondary trajectories of young adults, taking into consideration disability, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), and race/ethnicity, reveals the complexity of disparate outcomes. For young women with disabilities who are transitioning into adulthood, both economic and educational disadvantage are disproportionately high (Rousso & Wehmeyer, 2001). According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2004), the rate of employment for men and women with disabilities ages 16 to 64 is 40.5% and 33.5%, respectively. Women with disabilities earn less than their male counterparts and are more likely to be living in poverty (Jans & Stoddard, 1999). This is particularly true for young women of color and those who experienced low SES as children (Wagner, Newman, Cameto, & Levine, 2005). Although results from the second National Longitudinal Transition Study (NLTS-2) have provided data that demonstrate closing gaps in employment and postsecondary enrollment rates between adolescent girls and boys with disabilities, differences in achievement and outcomes between European American youth with and without disabilities are diminishing at higher rates than for young adults with disabilities who are also people of color (Wagner et al., 2005).
Students with LD, 32% of whom are female, represent about 6% of the public school student population (National Center for Education Statistics, 2005) and slightly less than one half of all students who receive special education services (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). This population has the second highest dropout rate of all disability categories (U.S. General Accounting Office, 2003). The postsecondary enrollment rate (57.5%) for high school graduates with LD is lower than rates for other disability categories (e.g., students with visual impairments, 70%; hearing impairments, 60%; speech impairments, 58.5%) (Horn & Berktold, 1999). Initial research provided evidence that employment and postsecondary education rates for young men with LD exceed those of young women with LD (Levine & Edgar, 1995; Levine & Nourse, 1998), and more current data regarding young women with disabilities continue to support those findings (Doren & Benz, 2001). Thus, addressing the transition needs of adolescent girls with LD requires teachers, parents, and adolescents girls with disabilities themselves to be aware of the unique challenges members of this population face as they enter adulthood.
Ameliorating postsecondary outcomes such as limited enrollment in postsecondary education and employment for youth with LD has been a central objective of research and practice for several decades. For example, ensuring that youth with LD access the general education curriculum and have comprehensive individualized education programs (IEPs) that address transition is important (Brinckerhoff, McGuire, & Shaw, 2002). A common finding throughout this research is the need for young adults with LD to be actively involved in transition planning and instruction (Price, 2002). Further, engaging students with LD in postsecondary transition activities is consistently included in recommended transition practices (Powers et al., 2005). Self-determination is central to student involvement because fruitful participation requires youth to set goals, self-assess progress, and realign goals accordingly (Field & Hoffman, 1994).
Self-determination theory involves the study of motivation, self-regulation, and personality (Ryan & Deci, 2000). In special education, the seminal work on human motivation by social psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan has been foundational to the conceptualization of self-determination (Wehmeyer, 1992). Ryan and Deci have endeavored to identify complex relationships among personality, personal resources (e.g., parental influence), and individualistic/independent cultural orientations intrinsic motivation and self-determination (Chirkov, Kim, Ryan, & Kaplan, 2003; Grolnick, Ryan, & Deci, 1991; Ryan & Deci, 2000). Special education researchers, meanwhile, have focused on practical applications of self-determination, ensuring that youth with disabilities have opportunities to act as causal agents in goal-setting and decision-making during postsecondary transitions (Field & Hoffman, 1994; Martin et al., 2006; Test et al., 2004; Wehmeyer, 1992, 1994). In Field and Hoffman's (1994) depiction of the self-determination construct for youth with disabilities, components of a youth's identity (self-knowledge and self-worth) converge and inform her ability to plan, thus enabling action. Actions lead to experience, which in turn informs identity, and the process continues in a cyclical manner. While this often-cited theoretical model of self-determination includes consideration of the environment in which a youth exists and acts, this part of the model is not depicted in a directional manner, and the relational aspects of the individual and her environment are not explicit, nor are subcomponents of environment included in detail.
Research on self-determination and individuals with disabilities has yielded foundational knowledge. First, self-determination is linked to successful postsecondary outcomes (Wehmeyer & Schwartz, 1997). Second, attitudes and skills that contribute to self-determination competency can be taught to individuals with disabilities (Algozzine, Browder, Karvonen, Test, & Wood, 2001). Third, students with disabilities are motivated by opportunities for self-determination and favor using these skills in various aspects of their lives (Hapner & Imel, 2002). Fourth, teachers and parents both facilitate and inhibit youths' self-determination (Field & Hoffman, 2002; Thoma, Rogan, & Baker, 2001; Zhang, Katsiyannis, & Zhang, 2002).
Numerous self-determination curricula have also been developed, implemented, and studied using quasi-experimental and qualitative research methods. The results suggest positive relationships between the curricula and student acquisition of both self-determination skills and attitudes and transition goals (Algozine et al., 2001).
Yet, little research has examined what effect, if any, sociocultural interactions have on self-determination practices of young adults with disabilities. Further, little is known about the impact of individual characteristics such as gender, SES, race/ethnicity, and language on self-determination perceptions and behaviors. Careful consideration of these variables is needed for several reasons. First, adolescents with LD remain relatively uninvolved in creating and implementing postsecondary transition plans (Lehmann, Bassett, & Sands, 1999; Martin et al., in press; Trainor, 2005; Williams & O'Leary, 2001). Identifying contributing factors to this disengagement is complex.
One potential factor might be student access to instruction and opportunity for self-determination during postsecondary transition. Given that access to effective, high-quality special education services may vary for youth based on ethnicity and socioeconomic status (Harry & Klingner, 2006), it is important to examine the extent to which youth with LD who share demographic variables such as ethnicity and/or low SES are likely to encounter transition planning and instruction that is representative of preferred practices.
Second, multicultural special education studies have illustrated that a person's cultural development and identity (shaped in part by demographic as well as sociocultural variables) can influence her preferences, strengths, and needs regarding participation in the special education process, one part of which is transition planning (Garcia, Mendez-Perez, & Ortiz, 2000; Geenen, Powers, Lopez-Vasquez, & Bersani, 2003; Harry, Rueda, & Kalyanpur, 1999). Therefore, information about the extent to which the range of preferences, strengths, and needs regarding self-determination vary based on cultural group membership (e.g., English language learners) is also needed.
Third, education research has amassed evidence that sociocultural and education variables interact, potentially creating power structures that result in inequity in educational opportunity and achievement (Anyon, 1997, 2005; Kozol, 1991; Romo & Falbo, 1996; Stanton-Salazar, 2001; Valenzuela, 1999). Another question that remains to be studied is the potential effect diminished educational opportunities have on self-determination.
Among the demographic variables, gender has received the most attention in the existing research. While some analyses do not support gender as a predictor of self-determination competencies (Abery & Stancliffe, 2003), others have presented evidence to suggest that girls face unique obstacles to practicing self-determination and that related instruction may be particularly beneficial to this group. For example, Wehmeyer and Lawrence (1995) found that young women were more likely to experience significant increases in some subcomponents of self-determination, including locus of control, than young men. Additionally, young women expressed preferences for practicing self-determination during transition planning conferences.
Moreover, self-determination theory posits that the construct is complex, comprised of both psychological/cognitive subcomponents possessed by an individual and environmental opportunities for its practice (Mithaug, Agran, Martin, & Wehmeyer, 2003). Given that (a) self-determination is dependent upon the individual and the context, (b) girls with LD may present learning and behavior characteristics that differ from their male counterparts, and (c) their opportunities for achievement may vary, adolescent girls may indeed have unique preferences, strengths, and needs regarding the development and practice of self-determination during postsecondary transition.
Because self-determination is associated with positive postsecondary outcomes, understanding the extent to which adolescent girls with LD need support for its development is essential. Doing so has the potential to improve outcomes and close gender gaps between young women and young men with LD. Further analysis of the perspectives of young women with LD with regard to demographic variables (i.e., disability status, race/ethnicity) is also important. Finally, understanding how group membership and cultural identities inform values and beliefs is foundational to understanding sociocultural interactions (Garcia & Dominguez, 1997).
Understanding adolescents' perspectives regarding participation in the special education process has the potential to improve practice (Morningstar, Turnbull, & Turnbull, 2005). While the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA; 2004) continues to emphasize the importance of including youth with disabilities in decisionmaking processes, little is known about how youth perceive such involvement. Adolescent females with LD who are also from marginalized groups have rarely been included in this line of inquiry. The purpose of this study was to help fill this void in the...
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