<p> Transition is a process that occurs throughout life. The focus of this basic qualitative study was on the services and programs provided to individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities. This study included the exploration of participants&rsquo; experiences in the classroom and community. There was limited research on current pioneers in the area of transition services for individuals with disabilities between the ages of 18 and 22 who returned to the public school system for a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). The literature review in this study included extensive research regarding the value of and many practical suggestions for designing quality transition programming to prepare each student with skills and competencies necessary for successful post-school outcomes. This study included interviews with transition coordinators, special education directors, special education teachers, and paraprofessionals. The research findings include observations of transition programs within the classroom and community setting, a review of Transition Individualized Education plans. The results from this study identified the services and programs that have led to successful post-secondary options for students with disabilities and revealed the following findings, community independence, soft and hard skills, utilization of visuals to design the curriculum, real-world activities, and age-appropriate experiences. The findings of this qualitative study suggested several implications for transition services and programs for students between the ages of 18 and 22 with autism and intellectual disabilities. School districts should offer community-based programs for students with disabilities starting at the age of 14, which would be in middle school. Despite the data collected during this study, services and programs for students with intellectual disabilities and autism continue to need fine-tuning.</p>

<p> Challenges encountered by young adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) during the transition from high school to employment have great potential to limit an individual&rsquo;s opportunity and/or capacity for self-determination regarding employment. This mixed-method study is focused on defining the characteristics of self-determined people and examining the challenges to self-determination experienced by a group of nine Project SEARCH interns with ID. Through field observations as well as initial and final interviews, photographs, goal-reporting, and administration of the <i>AIR Self-Determination Scale,</i> the challenges discovered among the Project SEARCH interns included those related to communication; social interaction and awareness; work skill development; emotional control; disposition, positive attitude, and work ethic; and seeing oneself outside of the current work experience. It further examined how intern experiences, interactions, and individualized supports available during the Project SEARCH year contributed to an intern&rsquo;s positive growth and change in the self-determination characteristics directly related to his/her identified challenges.</p>

<p> The study was a pre-experimental pre- and post-treatment single case study which focused on evaluating the effects of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) modeling during shared storybook readings. Aided AAC modeling interventions provide verbal and visual language models to support language comprehension and use for children with complex communication needs (CCN). The study measured four aspects of change before and after the AAC modeling phase including a) the number of communicative turns by the AAC user; b) the complexity and length of the initiations and responses made by the AAC user; c) the accuracy in responses to comprehension questions following the story; d) perceptions of the parent participant in regards to the intervention. The results indicated that when aided AAC modeling was implemented the child participant demonstrated an increase in: the number of communicative turns, accuracy in answering comprehension questions, comprehension of story grammar terminology, and production of story retells.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to determine the student outcomes of implementing schema-based instruction on students in grades 3-8 identified with an educational disability and ascertain how students&rsquo; developed mathematical problem solving skills. After special education teachers in a metropolitan school district in the Midwest administered a pre-assessment, the researcher used the results to select 21 students with an educational disability to participate in the mixed-methods study. Special education teachers implemented Asha K. Jitendra&rsquo;s (2007) educational program titled, Solving Math Word Problems: Teaching Students with Learning Disabilities Using Schema-Based Instruction, during the 2013-2014 school year and taught participants using these techniques. The researcher measured student achievement by using both a pre and post-assessment and M-CAP benchmark scores on mathematical problem solving. In addition, the researcher gathered perceptions of schema-based instruction via surveys and interviews with special education teachers, general education teachers, and student participants. The analysis of quantitative data from the pre and post-assessments of students participating in the schema-based program as well as the analysis of qualitative data from student participant surveys supported a positive outcome on the use of schema-based instruction with students with an educational disability; the findings of this study reinforced the then-current literature. However, the student participants' M-CAP assessment data did not demonstrate the same amount of growth as the assessment data from the schema-based program. In addition, the analysis of survey and interview data from the two teacher groups also displayed discrepancies between special education teachers&rsquo; and general education teachers&rsquo; overall perceptions of the schema-based instructional program. Despite this, the preponderance of evidence demonstrated most students who participated in the study did learn as a result of the schema-based instruction and developed mathematical problem-solving skills. Therefore, the findings of this study corroborated the then-current literature and supported the continual use of the researched program; Solving Math Word Problems: Teaching Students with Learning Disabilities Using Schema-Based Instruction, by Jitendra (2007). The researcher concluded this program a valid research-based intervention to increase mathematical problem solving skills for students with an educational disability.</p>

<p> At a time when state standards and assessments drive educational policy and literacy is defined as print-based, students who don&rsquo;t meet external benchmarks for developing skills along what is considered to be a &ldquo;normal trajectory&rdquo; are often seen as &ldquo;at-risk&rdquo; or diagnosed with learning disabilities. While there may be real variations in the ways that individuals learn, schools have a responsibility to offer a variety of pedagogical approaches in order to meet the needs of all children within an inclusive setting. This practitioner research dissertation seeks to better understand the ways that students identified as having learning disabilities create and communicate using a variety of modes including narrative writing, dance, and digital composition. Using qualitative data collected over the course of a school year while teaching full-time at an urban school with a folk arts focus, the author looks closely at the multimodal writing practices of four Black middle school girls identified as having learning disabilities. Drawing upon a theoretical framework rooted in Disability Studies/ Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) and New Literacy Studies, this study investigates the ways that students use multimodal composition to construct identities as able learners, thereby challenging deficit orientations at the intersection of race, gender and ability. By examining the artifacts that these students created over the course of an academic year as well as their reflections, and by extending a definition of literacy to include multimodal representations of knowledge, the relationships between curriculum and identity are explored. Findings reveal a complex interplay between multimodal composition and collaboration, and suggest that curriculum embedded with multiple modes for representing knowledge can create pathways to culturally relevant and inclusive pedagogy, and contribute to the construction of powerful writing identities.</p>

<p> Function-based assessments and interventions are routinely used in school settings as an effective method to address problem behaviors that impede the learning of the student or others. When function-based interventions are not successful, it is often due to problems with treatment integrity (TI). Using an ABCBC single subject design, this study examined whether function-based teacher supports could improve TI. The results demonstrated that the function-based supports provided to the teacher resulted in higher levels of TI and improvements in student behavioral outcomes. Using function-based intervention concepts to develop teacher intervention support, limitations to the study, and directions for future research are discussed.</p>

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