National Center on Secondary Education and Transition: Creating opportunities for youth with disabilities to achieve successful futures.

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Related Research

Ferguson, P., & Ferguson, D. (1996). Communicating adulthood: the meanings of independent living for people with significant cognitive disabilities and their families. Topics in Language Disorders, 16, 52-67.

This article is part of a special issue on the transition into adulthood for persons with language and learning disabilities. The writers analyze ways in which the status of adulthood for individuals with significant cognitive disabilities is complicated. There is a need to expand the various claims to adulthood available to individuals who have severe developmental disabilities. The analysis of a case history of an individual who has a number of disability labels, including mental retardation and quadriplegia, reveals the perceived problems of and promising emerging responses toward acquiring cultural, professional, and interpersonal claims to adulthood for persons with significant cognitive disabilities. Based on their analysis, the writers advocate the personal support agent strategy as one way of helping young adults with disabilities and their families to fulfill their potential of adulthood and independent living.

Heal, L.W., Rubin, S., Rusch, F. R. (Jan-Feb 1998). Residential independence of former special education high school students: A second look. Research in Developmental Disabilities 19(1), 1-26.

The residential independence of postsecondary students with disabilities, who had originally participated in the National Longitudinal Transition Study of students leaving high school between 1985 and 1990, was assessed through responses from 5,462 parents or surrogate parents of these students. Among predictors of residential independence were youths’ daily living and social skills, problem behaviors, and community characteristics.

Whitney-Thomas, J., Shaw, D., Honey, K., Butterworth, J. (Summer, 1998). Building a Future: A Study of Student Participation in Person-Centered Planning. Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, 23(2), 119-33.

This study examined the participation of students with disabilities who were planning for secondary transitions using person-centered planning processes. Findings suggest that student participation ranged from highly active to nonexistent across the observed planning meetings, with levels of participation influenced by students’ conversational style, meeting size, level of abstraction in discussions, and expectations and behavior of others.

Yuan, F.T., Reisman, E. S. (Summer, 2000). Transition to adulthood: Outcomes for graduates of a non-degree postsecondary program for young adults with severe learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 10(3), 153-63.

This study examined the outcomes for 140 graduates of the Threshold Program at Lesley University, Massachusetts, a non-degree post-secondary program, which aims to help young adults with severe learning disabilities and lower than average IQ develop independent living skills. Sixty-nine percent of these graduates are living independently, and 82% are employed.