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- Self-determination in education allows students to shape and mold their personal and educational experiences.
- Schools are now being asked to incorporate student choice and preference into their instructional practices, and integrate self-determination skills for students into everyday teaching opportunities.
- Promoting student choices and preferences in education is an important aspect of self-determination and quality of life.
- One of the goals of education is to produce adults who are responsible and self-sufficient.
- Accomplishing the goals of self-determination requires that a student live, learn, work, and play in an environment that upholds the principles that support self-determination.
- In the context of self-determination, freedom means that a student and their family will be able to freely choose a preferred lifestyle and acquire the necessary supports to achieve it.
- Authority means that an individual will have the power to control the funds needed to acquire and use the services and supports that will lead to the person's preferred lifestyle.
- Support means nurturing and developing the natural and informal supports that most people have in their lives.
- The responsibility principle recognizes that for too long, it has been assumed that persons with disabilities are incapable of contributing to their communities.
- A self-determined person acts as a "causal agent" and to do so requires that students have the skills to make informed choices, act on these choices, and evaluate the outcome.
- The Adaptability Instruction Model involves teaching students with disabilities a number of general skills including decision-making, independent performance, self-evaluation, and adjustment skills.
- The Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction breaks self-determination problem solving into phases including: what is my goal, what is my plan, and what have I learned?
- Once the student's preferences are known, and a set of individualized services and supports have been identified, another set of options must be generated from which the student may choose.
- Current human service and special educational practices offer limited opportunities to express preferences and make choices, particularly for persons with disabilities.
- Expressing preferences and making choices are critical parts of the person-centered planning process that forms the individualized core of self-determination processes in schools.
- The IEP should begin with the collection of information relating to the student's desired quality of life.
- Students who are not involved in making critical decisions about educational programming do not have a chance to develop the skills needed to become more self-determined and often fail to generalize important skills and knowledge across educational settings and into adult life.
- Perhaps one of the most important implications of teaching self-determination to students with disabilities is the opportunity to create more positive classroom environments.
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