This document was prepared by the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators,
funded by the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs.
An Instructional Approach to Facilitate
the Transition of High School Students
with Disabilities Into Adult Life
Andrew S. Halpern
University of Oregon
Since passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990 (Public
Law 101-462), there has been a flurry of activity in the area of transition planning. As
everyone in our field knows, this act requires that transition planning be addressed within
the IEP process for all special education students 16 years of age or older. The
reauthorization of IDEA currently underway will probably require that such planning
beginning at age 14.
It is not sufficient, however, to simply engage in transition planning. Both the mandate
and our common understanding of best practices requires that students should engage in
self- directed transition planning. As our field has responded to this challenge, two basic
approaches have emerged. One approach can generically be described as "personcentered planning". The variations of this approach all involve preparation for,
implementation of, and follow-through after a planning meeting , directed as much as
possible by the "target person" and guided by a skilled facilitator (citations). A second
approach involves student participation in a fully developed curriculum that is designed
to teach students how to engage successfully in self- directed transition planning
(citations). Both approaches seem to be very promising as interventions for helping
adolescents to begin taking charge of their own lives.
During the past several years, a large effort has unfolded within Oregon to develop a
curriculum that is focused on self-directed transition planning for high school students
with disabilities (Halpern, Herr, Wolf, Doren, Johnson and Lawson, in press). Over the
course of development, the curriculum has been field tested and evaluated with over 100
teachers and 1300 student/families. Evaluation efforts have included weekly feedback
from teachers and multiple focus group sessions with teachers, students and families. As
an outcome of this process, we have not only produced a curriculum, but we have also
developed some convictions about the desirable components of any curriculum that
addresses self-directed transition planning.
My purpose in developing this paper is to present some ideas about how to structure an
effective curriculum in this area. Obviously, I cannot avoid drawing heavily upon our
own experiences as a foundation for the conceptual model. My purpose, however, is not
to promote our product. By laying out some ideas about instructional design , I hope to
provide a foundation for discourse concerning how to facilitate self-directed transition
planning, whether it is approached through a person-centered planning model, as
described briefly above, or through a curriculum model.
Before embarking down this path, I would like to summarize briefly what we presently
know about transition outcomes for school-leavers with disabilities. I offer this as a
starting point for thinking about the purposes of transition planning and the role that
transition planning might play in helping school-leavers to make successful transitions.
A Brief Summary of Transition Outcomes
Research has been conducted on the post-school outcomes of students with disabilities
for the past 35 years (Chadsey-Rusch, Rusch, & O'Reilly, 1991). Most recently, the
federal government authorized and funded a National Longitudinal Transition Study
(NLTS) to provide us with a methodologically sound benchmark for evaluating the postschool outcomes of special education programs (Blackorby & Wagner, 1996). From these
efforts, some fairly clear findings have emerged. School-leavers with disabilities tend to:
1. leave school by dropping out at a higher rate than is typical for the general
population (Blackorby & Wagner, 1996; Zigmond & Thornton, 1985);
2. be unemployed and underemployed at higher rates than is characteristic for the
general population (Blackorby & Wagner, 1996; Edgar, Levine & Maddox, 1986;
William T. Grant Foundation, 1988; Hasazi, Gordon & Roe, 1985; Mithaug,
Martin, Agran & Rusch, 1988; Wagner, 1989; Wehman, Moon, Everson, Wood &
Barcus, 1988);
3. reside in the home of their parents after leaving high school for longer periods of
time than is characteristic of the general population (Benz & Halpern, 1987;
Edgar & Levine, 1986; Hasazi, Gordon, Roe, Hull, Finck & Salembier, 1985;
Sitlington, Frank & Carson, 1990);
4. participate in post-secondary education at lower rates than is characteristic for the
general population (Blackorby & Wagner, 1996; William T. Grant Foundation,
1988; Halpern,Yovanoff, Doren & Benz, 1995); and
5. experience major problems in the area of social and inter-personal functioning
(Edgerton, 1967; Halpern, 1985; Halpern, Close & Nelson, 1986; Heal &
Chadsey-Rusch, 1985; Wagner, 1989).
These findings present strong and unequivocal evidence that the transition from school to
adult life is fraught with severe problems for many school-leavers with disabilities.
Some Possible Explanations
Many explanations have been offered for these findings. Perhaps the most prevalent
suggestion is that school-leavers with disabilities often lack the skills that are required to
succeed in a competitive job market and in the complex social environment that
structures most of our living communities (Chadsey-Rusch, Rusch, & O'Reilly, 1991). In
some instances, a disability (e.g., mental retardation) is actually defined as sub-standard
performance in "adaptive behavior".
Lack of opportunities is another explanation often suggested for the follow-up results that
have been reported. A school-leaver may be prepared to work, but appropriate jobs are
simply not available . Some have even argued that this represents a structural
characteristic of our capitalist society (Farber, 1968; Edgar, 1988), whereby people with
disabilities are likely to be part of a "surplus population". The term "surplus", in this
context, means that the basic structure of our society requires that there will always be
more people desiring placements than there are available "slots" in the social order to
accommodate such placements. The perpetual unemployment that is always prevalent in
our country would seem to support such an explanation.
A third possible explanation, more recent in origin, suggests that poor transition
outcomes may be a function of lack of community support for school-leavers with
disabilities (Wolfensberger, 1989; McKnight, 1987). These people argue that we tend,
inadvertently and inappropriately, to regard the social world as being totally defined by
the interactions between service users and service providers. Within such a model, we
tend to regard people with disabilities as needing to be "fixed" in order to fit into the
social order (Edgar, 1988). An alternative "community" model suggests that there are
many "natural" organizations in communities that can help people with disabilities to get
along. The argument concludes with a statement that we have neglected to take advantage
of such resources, which has resulted in the poor community adjustment findings that we
observe.
All of these explanations are partially true. The main thesis of this chapter, however, is
that these unsatisfactory transition outcomes can also be attributed to the lack of
control that many adolescents experience, or believe that they experience, during this
stage of their lives . All of the above explanations - lack of student skills, lack of
opportunities to perform, and lack of community support - place the burden of
performance on something that "we" have failed to do for "them". As teachers, we have
failed to teach our students the skills that they need to be good employees and
independent livers. As a society, we have failed to create enough jobs for everyone to
access. As members of communities, we have failed to support people with disabilities in
their endeavors to function adequately.
As much as teachers, family members and other concerned people in the community may
want to "help" adolescents to make important life decisions, each of us is eventually
responsible for our own life. To the extent that anyone functions from the perspective of
"learned helplessness", the road blocks encountered within our society will play an
increased role in preventing people from achieving their potential. On the other hand, as
adolescents begin to take charge of their own lives in constructive and socially acceptable
ways, many potential barriers can be overcome and many desirable transition outcomes
can be achieved, often exceeding the expectations of parents, teachers and other
significant adults.
An adolescent's ability to exercise "self-determination", however, will not just happen.
Adolescents must be taught how to engage in transition planning, and they must want to
use the tools of planning to provide new direction in their lives. This presents a delicate
dilemma. While adolescents are still learning how to assume increasing levels of
responsibility for their own life-decisions, teachers are exercising substantial control
through the very structure of the instructional process. As adolescents become more and
more skillful and responsible in planning their lives, the teacher must "let go" and
provide ever decreasing amounts of support and guidance. Parents, of course, face a
similar dilemma as their children begin to show interest in leaving home.
What would it mean to for an adolescent to gain control over such important issues as
preparing for a job or graduating from high school? A theoretical answer to this question
can be found in the literature on career planning and problem solving.
It is interesting that career development theories, which were developed in the 1960's and
based on decision-making and problem-solving (e.g., Gelatt, 1962; Krumboltz & Hamel,
1977), have regained the spot-light in contemporary thought on transition planning
(Halpern, 1994; Szymanski, Turner, & Hershenson,1992; Szymanski, 1994). While it
may be argued that chance or a "luck" factor may operate in the emergence of some
transition outcomes, we know that total dependence on luck or other "external" factors
will not produce good consequences on a consistent basis. From a theoretical perspective,
the literature suggests that transition planning should be guided by a logical problemsolving, decision-making, or planning strategy (Bandura, 1986).
In line with such an approach, transition planning should contain the following steps as
part of a decision-making process. Adolescent planners should be able to:
_ engage in self-exploration and self-evaluation;
_ identify and select personally meaningful transition goals;
_ generate a range of possible alternative solutions to meet that goal;
_ identify and select appropriate activities for pursuing their goals;
_ monitor their progress and make adjustments in their plans, when appropriate.
It also is clear that students must be taught how to engage in this process successfully.
But adolescents, with or without disabilities, are generally not naturally inclined to
engage in transition planning. The "future" seems far away, and much less interesting
than what to do today or tomorrow. Adolescents also tend to believe that they have much
more control over short-range decisions than over long-range plans. "Why bother
worrying about something," they ask, "if your ability to influence the future is both hard
to comprehend and difficult to accomplish?" This is the real life context that must be
acknowledged as a starting point in the design of instruction for teaching adolescents how
to do transition planning.
In the remainder of this chapter, I will identify and describe the components that should
be present in any curriculum that deals with transition planning. I will also discuss some
features of instructional design that should be incorporated into such a curriculum, and I
will conclude with some brief suggestions about how to incorporate such a curriculum
into existing instructional programs.
Components of a Desirable Curriculum
We begin by acknowledging that most adolescents have a dim interest and awareness of
the nature and purpose of transition planning. A successful curriculum in this area,
however, will be measured by the extent to which participants both gain knowledge about
transition planning and learn skills for doing transition planning. I believe that there are
six desirable components of a transition planning curriculum. Such a curriculum must:
_ address and enhance student motivation to participate
_ build upon a foundation of student self-exploration and self-evaluation
_ address the most important areas of student transition, in a manner that is responsive to
student interests and needs
_ teach students how to set goals and develop a concrete transition plan
_ provide students with an opportunity to direct their own transition planning meeting
involving significant other people
_ teach students how to implement and monitor their own transition plans
Student motivation
The first business of any transition planning curriculum must present instruction on
arousing student interest in the need for doing transition planning. Many students will not
be initially motivated to participate, for a variety of reasons. Most students will have little
experience in long-range planning, and they are likely to regard their planning needs as
determining what to do next week-end. Many students will not have thought very much
about what they want to do when they leave high school, and how such long-range goals
might affect their current goals and activities. Most students will be struggling to gain
control over their own choices and decisions, and this struggle will potentially bring them
into conflict with their teachers and parents. Any curriculum in this area must
acknowledge this context, and attempt throughout its lessons to entice students to want to
engage in transition planning.
There are several ways in which a transition planning curriculum can address this
motivational component. Let us assume that any such curriculum would consist of three
major components:
_ an introductory section dealing with the basic concepts of transition planning,
_ a skill acquisition section teaching students the skills that they need to do transition
planning, and
_ a plan implementation section during which students implement and monitor their
plans, making adjustments as needed.
Tactics for enhancing student motivation will be different during each of these three
phases of the curriculum.
Setting the hook . As mentioned above, the possibilities for engaging in long-range
planning are not intrinsically motivating for most adolescents. Furthermore, the
introductory phases of any curriculum, including one dealing with transition planning,
must include orientation and vocabulary building components that also have the potential
for being less than exciting.
During the early lessons of a transition planning curriculum, students will become
motivated to participate only if they can begin to see the relevance of doing long-range
planning in spite of their general disbelief in either the efficacy or enjoyability of such
activities. This means that the early lessons must somehow accomplish two purposes:
1. sensitizing students to the relevance of transition planning to their own lives, and
2. encouraging students to believe that they can actually do something useful if they
were to engage in such planning.
In order to accomplish these purposes, these early lessons must be entertaining as well as
instructive, and they must include numerous real-life examples of transition issues
prevalent in student lives that might benefit from systematic planning. No solutions are
required at this point in the curriculum. An emerging perception of personal need will
provide the motivation to become engaged.
Skill Acquisition . The next phase of a transition planning curriculum involves helping
students to acquire or hone the skills that they need to do transition planning effectively.
The precise skills that students need fall primarily into two clusters: self-evaluation and
planning/problem-solving. Momentarily I will discuss the nature of these skills. From the
perspective of motivation , two things must occur during this phase of the curriculum in
order to keep students engaged in the process:
1. they must begin to sense that they are actually gaining control over some
important decisions in their lives; and
2. they must begin to develop a concrete transition plan that reflects their own
needs, interests and abilities.
Gaining a perception of control, at the very beginning, may be little more than
suspending disbelief. The perception of gaining control will emerge throughout a
well-structured curriculum in transition planning, so long as the focus of this
curriculum is on student self-direction.
These feelings of control will solidify when the student develops his or her own
transition plan. This does not mean that parents and teachers must simply
acquiesce to student demands. A self-directed plan places the student in the
driver's seat, but the car cannot function without fuel and maintenance services
that are provided by significant others. Lessons that reinforce this
interdependence will be motivational for the student who will be learning
productive ways of interacting assertively and effectively with authority figures.
Getting the job done . Engaging in the planning process and developing a concrete
plan are necessary but not sufficient outcomes of an effective transition planning
curriculum. Actually accomplishing a plan requires an entirely different set of
skills and provides unique and different opportunities for student reinforcement.
During the part of the curriculum that deals with plan implementation, students
must:
3. experience some success in achieving at least parts of their transition plans; and
4. learn that if part of a plan doesn't work out, their response should be to modify the
plan rather than simply acknowledge and accept defeat.
As students learn and practice these plan-implementation skills, they begin to
experience the most powerful motivation-enhancing feelings that a good
transition planning curriculum can deliver. Students learn how to make their plans
succeed, and success is almost guaranteed since problems can usually be
overcome by changing one's expectations. Students find it very motivational to
learn that there are many shades of grey between getting exactly what one wants
and feeling the despair of failure.
Self-exploration and self-evaluation
"Know thyself" and "to thine own self be true." Although Socrates and Shakespeare were
probably not particularly interested in transition planning, they both understood that we
all need an accurate understanding of who we are as a foundation for considering who we
might become. Adolescents must be taught to think about their likes, dislikes, strengths
and weaknesses as a foundation for setting personal goals that will guide them into the
future.
Traditional assessment practices do not encourage this type of self-evaluation. Most
educational assessments are performed as tests of student behavior. An expert, often a
teacher, requires the student to demonstrate ability or proficiency under structured and
controlled (standardized) conditions. The outcomes of assessment are used to make
decisions about the student, with someone other than the student being the decisionmaker. Will the student be admitted into a program? What grade will the student receive?
What additional instruction does the student need in reading or math? Rarely are the
results of such assessments placed under the student's control for interpretation and
utilization.
Even though the traditional uses of assessment have almost entirely fallen into a
"diagnostic-prescriptive" approach, there is no reason to confine the purposes of
assessment in such a way. It is thinkable, and has been argued with passion (Vash, 1984),
that person being assessed can and should control both the type of assessments that are
performed and the eventual utilization of the assessment outcomes. In a sense, Vash
argues, the person being assessed should "hire" the assessment expert to serve as a
personal "consultant", leaving the ultimate decision-making to the "employer." Such an
approach is totally empowering and places responsibility for the use of assessment
information where it belongs.
Although this way of viewing assessment is not typical in our field, there are some
emerging examples of self-evaluation approaches for the purpose of helping adolescents
with disabilities to engage effectively in transition planning (Halpern, Herr, Wolf,
Lawson, Doren & Johnson., in press; Wehmeyer, 1995a; Clark & Patton, in press). Such
approaches must be built into any curriculum dealing with transition planning as a
foundation for engaging in such planning.
Lesson content and structure . Lessons in this area should begin with the assumption that
students will have little or no experience with an assessment approach purporting to place
them in charge of interpreting and using the outcomes of assessment. It is more likely that
students will be somewhat fearful of assessment practices, expecting that more traditional
approaches will be utilized.
Given this likely set of expectations about assessment, the first instructional unit in selfdirected assessment should probably help students understand and appreciate the
difference between most traditional assessments that they have experienced and the new
approach they will be learning that focuses on self-evaluation. After students have been
warmed up to the viability and utility of this approach to assessment, they must then learn
how to actually conduct a useful self-evaluation. These lessons, at minimum, will have
two distinct purposes. They will teach students:
1. how to conduct a self-evaluation, using one or more appropriate instruments that
would be introduced and described through these lessons; and
2. how to interpret the outcomes of the self-evaluation, taking charge of the
interpretation process in the manner described by Vash (1984).
The final lessons dealing with self-evaluation should focus on teaching students to use
their assessment outcomes to help them identify appropriate transition goals and activities
to include in their transition plans.
The focus of these lessons is clearly on teaching students how to engage successfully in
the process of self-evaluation. But what about instrumentation? What will be the "raw
data" that students should use in order to help them to perform meaningful selfevaluations?
There is no single correct answer to this question. All types of assessment information are
potentially useful, including traditional psychometric tests, curriculum-based
assessments, behavioral observations, and rating scales. The issue is not so much about
how the information is collected, but rather how the information is used and who is
ultimately responsible for making the interpretations.
In order to implement these lessons, teachers will need to select one or more assessment
tools that fit in appropriately with the process of student self-evaluation. We have chosen
to use a rating instrument in our curriculum (Halpern, et al., in press) called the
Transition Skills Inventory . This inventory evaluates student skills in the same areas that
students are expected to consider as they develop their transition goals. Students evaluate
themselves, as do their teachers and their parents, using the same set of items.
Differences of opinion are treated as an invitation to discuss possible reasons for viewing
student performance differently, rather than a sign of unreliability of assessment. In the
end, students develop a sense of their strengths and weaknesses, and they use this
information to help them develop their transition plans.
Four essential areas of concern for transition planning
The essence of transition planning asks adolescents to consider what they want "to
become" when they leave school as young adults, and what they need to do now in order
to begin moving themselves toward their future images of selfhood. Over the years,
numerous descriptions and taxonomies have been proposed to conceptualize "adult
adjustment" of people with disabilities (Chadsey-Rusch, et al., 1991). All of this work,
however, has been produced from the perspective of theoreticians, researchers, policymakers, and service providers. As these professional adults have struggled with "defining
the good life" and developed ever increasing nuances in proposed taxonomies, the field
has "progressed" in gaining clarification about the broad purposes of transition planning.
Adolescents with disabilities have rarely been engaged in this dialogue. Assuming that a
transition planning curriculum has been successful in simply getting their attention and
securing their motivation to participate, during the early phases of such a curriculum they
won't even have a working vocabulary for identifying transition goals. The establishment
of such a working vocabulary must be one of the early purposes of a curriculum on
transition planning.
Looking at the various "professional" taxonomies for guidance, four areas can be
identified that adolescents should consider as they begin to develop their transition goals:
1.
2.
3.
4.
personal life
jobs
education and training
living on your own
These areas capture the essence of the professional taxonomies, using language that is
easy for the students to learn and appreciate as relevant to their own emerging lives as
young adults.
Personal life . If anything can be regarded as a "hook" for beginning to think about
transition goals, the quality of one's personal life is a prime candidate. We are all
interested in such topics as learning how to get along better with other people and
exploring new ways of using leisure time effectively. This content area serves as a good
"first topic" in an adolescent's beginning vocabulary for transition planning.
Jobs . Like it or not, adolescents are bound to hear frequently the question, "What do you
want to do when you grow up?" Many adolescents also find part-time jobs while still in
school, usually to earn money for immediate needs and desires rather than to explore
some possibilities for a career. In other words, we can almost count on adolescents being
exposed, in one way or another, to the need for work and the dynamics of work. This is a
good foundation to exploit within a curriculum on transition planning. Students should be
encouraged to explore systematically some possible matches between their interests and
skills, one the one hand, and job opportunities that might draw upon their interests and
skills.
Education and training . Most adolescents can relate to the question of whether and how
they will get out of high school. The consequence of not attending to this question, at its
worst, is dropping out of school. Another issue that catches the attention of adolescents is
whether or not they will need additional education or training to accomplish their
vocational goals and what they need to do to secure such training. Students should be
encouraged to explore the answers to such questions as these.
Living on your own . Most adolescents begin to fantasize while they are still in school
about "getting a pad of my own". This is a normal manifestation of a growing urge to
become independent. It is surprising, therefore, how little adolescents actually know
about what it takes to gain independence. Endless research (Chadsey-Rusch, et al., 1991)
shows that many adolescents know very little about such things as money management,
finding and securing housing, preparing meals, home management, and accessing the
community resources that one needs in order to function independently. Students should
be encouraged to explore the discrepancy between their desire to become independent
and their ability to do so.
An important lesson that should also be reinforced during this phase of the curriculum is
that one does not need to be a "lone ranger" in order to live as an adult "independently".
The word "independent" is actually misleading. Very few people, with or without the
challenge of a disability, live in total isolation from other people. In the normal interplay
of human interactions, we sometimes give help and nurturance to others and we
sometimes receive help and nurturance from others. The free flow of mutual support is a
vital characteristic of a well functioning community. We sometimes tend to forget that
"interdependence" is the true goal of "independent" living. This is because human nature
and United States social mores tend to emphasize individual achievement and
competition as being more fundamental than community prosperity and collaboration.
We do not want to teach our students that it is somehow "wimpy" to rely upon others
while still being responsible for planning one's life. Knowing when to ask for help and
being able to use help effectively are important transition skills. The need for such skills
occurs at every stage of the planning process. Students must learn that it is desirable to
use help wisely and that this is not the manifestation of a character flaw. The curriculum
must reinforce this concept again and again.
Setting goals and developing a plan
A working vocabulary of transition goals, a developing motivation to participate in the
transition planning process, and a carefully executed self-evaluation are, of course, only
useful preliminary steps along the road of transition planning. There are many possible
concrete goals that one might choose to pursue within each of the four transition areas
that I have just described. In order to minimize potential confusion that might then
become a stumbling block for students, a curriculum on transition planning should
identify specific goal choices and very concrete activities for students to select as they
develop their transition plans. This "catalog" of goal and activity possibilities becomes a
foundation for actual student choices. If this catalog somehow doesn't tap a particular
student's needs and interests, the structure provided within the catalog will be sufficient
to help the student to generate a unique goal and/or activity that is personally relevant.
Lesson structure . At this point in the curriculum, students are highly involved in
developing their own transition plans. Instruction begins to take on the form of
individualized coaching and tutoring, rather than group instruction. The intended
outcome is for each student to create a unique plan, sensitive to individual needs,
preferences and abilities.
If you accept my argument that transition planning should address four main areas of
concern - personal life, jobs, education and training, and living on your own - then it
follows that transition plans should also include something in each of these areas.
Following our belief that students should be able to choose from a "catalog" of
possibilities, we have identified 12 goal possibilities in our own curriculum (Halpern, et
al., in press) from which students may make their selections. Figure 1 displays these goal
choices.
FIGURE 1
List of Transition Goals
Personal Life


I will explore new ways to use my leisure time.
I will learn new ways for getting along with others.

I will explore effective ways to improve my physical, mental, or spiritual health.
Jobs



I will begin to explore jobs that match my interests and what I do well.
I will find out more about several jobs that interest me.
I will find out as much information as possible about my top job choice.
Education and Training



I will make a plan for completing high school.
I wil make a plan for getting vocational training.
I will make a plan for getting a college degree.
Living on Your Own



I will learn the skills I need to live on my own.
I will learn how to use community resources to help me be independent.
I will learn how to be a good citizen and stay out of trouble.
Goal statements alone, of course, are not sufficient to provide students with structure and
guidance for implementing their transition plans. A fully developed plan must also
contain a description of activities that students will pursue to attain their goals, proposed
timelines for accomplishing activities, identification of resources that students can draw
upon for help, and concrete indicators for determining whether or not goals have been
achieved. In order to provide the reader with a sense of this flow of information within a
plan, Figure 2 displays some of the activities that we have developed in our curriculum
(Halpern, et al., in press) for a few of our goals.
FIGURE 2
Possible Activities for Some Goals
I will learn new ways for getting along better with others. I will work with my teacher or
counselor to learn how to:





listen more carefully to what other people are saying.
disagree with someone in a way that helps solve the problem.
make new friends.
accept useful criticism without getting angry.
ask for advice and use advice.
I will find out more about several jobs that interest me. In order to learn more about the 2
or 3 jobs that interest me most, I will:





go to the library and read some books or articles about these jobs.
use a computerized Career Information Service to locate information about these
jobs.
talk to people who are already working in these areas.
visit the state employment agency to find out more about these jobs.
do volunteer work that will help me learn more about these jobs.
I will make a plan for completing high school.





I will learn what the requirements are for graduating from my high school.
I will learn about the advantages and disadvantages of getting a GED.
I will learn more about the alternative high school completion programs that are
available in my community.
I will visit an alternative high school completion program in my community.
I will list the advantages and disadvantages of the different possibilities that I
have discovered.
A fully developed transition plan would include more information than is displayed in
Figures 1 and 2. This additional information would complete the documentation of
logistics for implementing the plan and evaluating whether or not it has been completed
successfully. Types of additional information include (1) timelines for completing
activities, (2) resources that the student may need to help him or her to complete an
activity successfully, (3) check-in dates for monitoring progress, and a (4) clear
indication of evaluation criteria that one might examine in order to know if the transition
goal has been accomplished. The lessons during this phase of the curriculum teach
students how to use this planning structure to facilitate their own transition planning
process.
The information presented in Figures 1 and 2 illustrate an important characteristic of a
transition planning curriculum. As students learn a planning process as a consequence of
participating in such a curriculum, this does not automatically translate into the
acquisition of many important skills that the student will need in order to actually make a
good transition from school into the adult community. By successfully completing a
transition planning curriculum, the student will:
_ become motivated to do transition planning,
_ learn and exercise planning skills,
_ develop a personally relevant transition plan, and
_ self-monitor implementation of his or her plan.
The actual implementation of the transition plan, however, will require that the student
engage in a wide variety of activities above and beyond those that structure the
development of a plan.
Perhaps an example will help to illustrate this distinction. Figure 2 identifies a Personal
Life planning goal that involves learning how to "get along better with other people".
Some possible activities to facilitate the achievement of this goal include (1) listening
more carefully, (2) disagreeing with others in a productive manner, (3) learning how to
make new friends, (4) accepting criticism without getting angry, and (5) learning how to
ask for advice and help from others. Many other activities are possible in pursuit of this
goal, and the curriculum encourages students to think of other possibilities that are
personally relevant.
A transition planning curriculum helps students to identify and select such activities to
include in their plans. A transition planning curriculum does not teach students the actual
skills that are embedded in selected activities. The acquisition of such skills requires
additional instruction supported by other curriculum materials.
Because of this distinction between teaching students to plan and teaching students how
to accomplish their plans, a transition planning curriculum cannot be successful unless it
is supported by other curricula dealing with implementation skills. In the development of
our own transition planning curriculum (Halpern, et al., in press), we have found that the
lessons in this curriculum work best when taught twice a week, embellished with
additional instruction in related areas. I will return to this logistical consideration later in
the chapter.
The planning meeting
The culminating event in the process of developing a transition plan should be a studentdirected transition planning meeting, connected to the student's IEP meeting if the student
is 16 years of age or older. The student, teacher and parents typically attend this meeting,
although others may be invited as well, such as friends of the student or people in the
community who might be able to help the student to reach his or her goals. During this
meeting, the student presents his or her tentative transition plan, and receives helpful
feedback from the others who are present. Program developers have found this event to
be a very powerful part of the total transition planning process (Halpern, 1994; Martin,
Marshall & Maxon, 1993; Wehmeyer, 1995b). Students feel empowered to make choices.
Teachers and parents are often amazed by the skill and maturity students show as they
"take charge" in a socially desirable manner. Everyone present becomes highly involved
in addressing transition issues and concerns that in the past may have been swept under
the rug.
Lesson structure . The history of student involvement in the IEP process is not very
encouraging. More often than not, the IEP meeting has been largely controlled by
teachers with very little engagement or involvement from parents or students. With this
type of experiential history, the new legal presence of transition planning requirements
within IEP's of adolescents is hardly a guarantee that students will suddenly become
meaningfully involved in the process.
In essence, we are faced with both a motivation and skill deficit. Students are likely to
have little desire to participate actively in IEP meetings, and they have few skills that
would help them to do this successfully. A transition planing curriculum must respond to
both of these deficits by teaching students how to play an assertive role in their transition
planning meetings and encouraging students to make such an attempt in spite of the fact
that their previous involvement in IEP meetings have probably not been very satisfying.
Assuming that students can be motivated to participate assertively, they will need to learn
and practice a variety of skills including:
_ selecting and inviting the participants
_ introducing the participants
_ presenting their plans
_ encouraging and processing feedback from other participants
_ responding positively to suggestions from others
_ closing the meeting and arranging for follow-up activities
Lessons within a transition planning curriculum must address these skills. Furthermore,
the lessons must be sensitive to varying levels of involvement and assertiveness that
different students may be prepared to learn and practice at any given point in time.
Taking charge of a planning meeting is not an "all or nothing" dichotomy. It may take
years for students to reach their full potential for self-direction.
Implementing the plan
Planning is not a static event. No one is able to foresee the future with total accuracy, and
the activities one chooses are likely to encounter varying degrees of success. The ultimate
success of a plan, therefore, will require:
1. following through on commitments,
2. self-monitoring accomplishments, and
3. making adjustments to the plan when things don't work out entirely.
In order to encourage students to engage effectively in this "implementation" phase of the
transition planning process, an effective curriculum on transition planning must develop
some self-monitoring tools and procedures for students to use and teachers to guide.
Lesson structure . The lesson structure at this point in the curriculum has two distinct
foci: (1) coaching individuals with the implementation of their own transition plans; and
(2) providing students with opportunities to share their implementation experiences with
one another for the purposes of mutual reinforcement and brainstorming ways for
overcoming obstacles.
The foundation for these two distinct lesson strands is identical. Students must develop a
weekly strategy for attacking their goals and activities. In essence, they must break their
efforts into a series of "small steps", each of which is:
_ clearly related to a specific goal that the student has adopted,
_ completable within a short period of time (preferably one week), and
_ provable and documentable.
The lessons involve teaching students how to identify these small steps, proceed with
their implementation, and overcome any barriers that they may encounter in the process
either by extended practice or by altering the nature of the difficult steps.
Summary
In an important sense, the ultimate goal of a transition planning curriculum is to teach
students a transition planning process . When students emerge into the self-monitoring
phase of the curriculum, they will find that transition goals and activities frequently
require modification for a wide variety of reasons. As students become proficient in
making such modifications, they will also become more and more empowered to engage
in transition planning with decreasing levels of support from their parents and teachers.
To the extent that this occurs, the ultimate intent of the curriculum will be accomplished.
Students will have learned an approach to problem-solving, in the context of making
transitions, that will serve them well for the rest of their lives!
Some Related Instructional Issues
In the preceding section of this chapter, I have addressed the question of what content
and lesson structure should be included in a curriculum focusing on transition planning.
In this section, I will address some instructional issues that must also be addressed when
delivering this type of curriculum. In particular, I will address the following five
questions:
_ When should a student begin to engage in transition planning?
_ How do we maintain a balance between learning about transition planning and doing
transition planning?
_ What should be the setting for presenting a transition planning curriculum?
_ What are the personnel requirements for teaching transition planning?
_ Should parents play a role in the process?
Although there are no clearly definitive answers to these questions, simply thinking about
them helps us to understand the underlying issues and their relevance to the ways in
which instruction is delivered.
When should a student begin to engage in transition planning ?
No one would disagree that the day after a student leaves high school is too late to begin
planning about what to do after leaving high school. Some have argued that students can
and should begin to attend to "career development" during the elementary school years
(Clark, 1979). In between these extremes, there are a lot of possibilities.
Student age is only one of the contexts that we must consider when debating a starting
time for transition planning. Does a student come from a family and cultural environment
that values and supports such planning? Is there a good match between the cognitive
demands of the curriculum and the cognitive abilities of the student? Is there a good
match between the content of the curriculum and the kinds of questions that a student is
ready to address?
Taking all of these factors into consideration, most students should begin learning how to
do transition planning somewhere between the ages of 14 and 21 . Below or above these
ages, the content of the curriculum may begin to lose relevance. Teachers will have to
make a judgement call when thinking about the possibility for any given student. If a
student has been lucky enough to participate in career development activities during
elementary school years, this may also affect the age at which he or she is ready to begin
working on a transition planning curriculum.
How do we maintain a balance between learning about and doing transition planning ?
Students will learn how to do transition planning only by doing transition planning.
Although the planning process is similar for most, the content of each student's plan is
very individualized. This calls for an intricate mixture of teaching general concepts and
providing students with structured opportunities for developing their own plans. When
the focus of a lesson is on "learning about", a group-oriented lecture and discussion
format often works best, accompanied by group activities. As the lessons progress into
the "how to" content, each student begins to move down a somewhat unique pathway. At
this stage in the curriculum, teachers must begin to individualize the instruction. The
balancing of group and individualized instruction is ultimately a teacher judgment,
depending on the needs of the students and the availability of instructional aides for
assisting the teacher.
What should be the setting for presenting a transition planning curriculum?
There are many possible ways in which such a curriculum might be presented. A separate
class. As part of some other class. Within the context of a counseling or guidance
program. Our experience thus far (Halpern, et al., in press) suggests that the best format
involves embedding a transition planning curriculum within the context of some other
relevant class, such as career development, life skills, study skills, or an "alternative
learning environment." There are several reasons for this recommendation. Remember
that an important part of the curriculum involves group instruction and student
interactions. This is not easily achieved in many counseling programs that are highly
individualized. Furthermore, the curriculum tends to work best if it is not compressed
into a short period of time. The "homework" between lessons often requires a fair amount
of time to do, especially if parental involvement is to occur meaningfully. Simply finding
a time when parents and students can get together is sometimes a major achievement.
Finally, recall the discussion above about the difference between transition planning
skills and transition implementation skills. Planning, by itself, is not sufficient to insure a
successful transition. Students must also learn a variety of implementation skills, none of
which are covered directly by a transition planning curriculum. If the planning
curriculum is embedded within a broader transition implementation course, then the
planning skills may reinforce the implementation skills, and vice versa.
For all of these reasons, we recommend that a transition planning curriculum be
incorporated into some other relevant class, thereby spreading out lessons but still
keeping them embedded within "a course" for which students can receive credit.
What are the personnel requirements for teaching transition planning ?
The minimum personnel requirement for implementing the type of curriculum described
above is a single teacher who assumes overall responsibility for delivering the
instruction. Team teaching is also possible, so long as someone is clearly in charge. As
the lessons move from primarily group instruction to large amounts of individualized, or
at least small group, instruction, the personnel needs will definitely increase. In other
words, as students become more and more involved in developing their own transition
plans, this is often accompanied by a need for individualized or small group instruction.
In special education classrooms, teacher aides can often provide this extra support. Peer
support is another model that can be explored, whereby students help each other in
developing their plans. Once again, flexibility and creativity go a long way, as long as
one teacher is clearly in charge of managing the process.
Should parents play a role in the process ?
I strongly believe that parental involvement is almost essential in any curriculum that
purports to deal with transition planning. At one level of thinking, the need for such
involvement seems obvious. Parents typically exercise a profound influence over their
children, for better or for worse. Parents typically want their children to "succeed in life".
Parents typically struggle with issues of control over their children's lives. Do parents let
their son or daughter "learn from living", or do parents try to prevent them from making
"obvious" mistakes? Adolescents, on the other hand, struggle with growing needs for
independence. They want to take charge of their own lives, and yet they are usually not
quite certain how to do this effectively.
These strong undercurrents surrounding the issue of control are a powerful context within
which any transition planning curriculum must operate. Some parent/student
combinations work well, and others do not. Most troublesome, of course, are those
situations where the student is totally and unreasonably rebellious and/or where the
parent is dysfunctional or abusive.
In spite of these variations, I believe that the best context for transition planning involves
cooperation and collaboration between parent and student. Certainly there will be some
exceptions, and teacher judgement will be required to identify these exceptions. In such
situations, it may be possible to find a "parent surrogate", such as a friend or relative,
who is willing and able to play the parental role.
There are four possible ways that parents or surrogates can become involved in this
curriculum. They can:
1. become aware of what there student is doing, and be generally supportive at home
2. become actively involved in certain lessons where parent participation is
especially important
3. participate as a strong collaborator in the student's planning meeting
4. support the student in the implementation of his or her transition plan
A good curriculum for transition planning should include structured ways for helping
parents and/or surrogates to become involved in each of these ways.
Summary
Many adolescents with disabilities experience undesirable outcomes as they make the
transition from high school into their adult communities. These undesirable outcomes
cover all facets of life, including personal adjustment, employment history, participation
in post-secondary education, and integration into their communities as people who can
function with appropriate levels of independence.
These poor outcomes are probably not totally reversible. Many disabilities result in skill
deficits that can be difficult to ameliorate. Our social and cultural mores promote survival
of the fittest, and people with disabilities do not always compete well. Furthermore,
people with disabilities are sometimes excluded from participation in community
organizations that provide nurturance, which only exacerbates the impact of skill deficits.
We have not yet fully exploited a major opportunity for overcoming the negative
outcomes that emerge from this "challenging" social context. We have tended to
capitulate to these trends, allowing people with disabilities to experience increasing
amounts of "learned helplessness". We have not yet taught adolescents with disabilities
that they can take charge of their lives in a meaningful and productive way. We have not
examined yet through research the impact of student "self-determination" as a force for
lessening the negative transition outcomes that have been observed consistently over the
years.
Evidence is only beginning to emerge that self-directed transition planning can help to
produce good transition outcomes. Curricula are only beginning to emerge that address
this area of instruction. Even though the field is young, we do know enough already to
suggest how such a curriculum should be structured in order to be effective.
We must first acknowledge that students are not naturally inclined to engage in transition
planning, even though they do desperately want to find ways of asserting themselves
effectively and gaining control over important life decisions. This instinct, however, is
not usually well honed. Students must be taught how to do transition planning. If it came
naturally, there would be no need for a curriculum. Students must also feel motivated to
learn how to do transition planning. They are motivated to "take charge" of their lives,
but they are not necessarily convinced that a curriculum on "planning" is the best way to
address this need. This means that the first characteristic of a good transition planning
curriculum is its ability to seduce students into participating.
Once students have made this commitment, there are three types of skills that they must
learn:
_ self-evaluation
_ plan development
_ plan implementation
Instruction will vascilate between learning about transition planning (in small groups)
and doing transition planning (highly individualized).
Although the development of a concrete transition plan is an important tangible outcome
of participating in a transition planning curriculum, this is not the most important
outcome. When such a curriculum is successful, students will experience very basic
changes in the ways that they view themselves and the ways in which they interact with
other people. Students will experience a variety of ways in which they are able to take
charge of important life decisions in a manner that is reinforced by their teachers and
parents. This will result in a growing sense of empowerment and a reduction of feelings
of learned helplessness . This sense of empowerment will be backed up by a new set of
skills. Students will learn a planning and problem-solving process that they can use
repeatedly throughout their lives as they encounter new transitions, big and small, that
inevitably accompany each of our lives.
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