Transition from school to post-school environments for youth with disabilities: a critical analysis

Abstract

The past two decades encompass a transition movement in the United States; a time of widespread research, demonstration, and systems change initiatives and activities designed to promote and support the transition of youth with disabilities from school to post-school work, education and adult living environments. The present study sought to examine the transition movement in the larger context of the process of transformation in society's relationship with persons with disabilities over time, through a critical and poststructural analysis of the lived experiences of six change agents active in the transition movement, and a purposeful sample of documents representative of the transition literature. Designed to complement and provide theoretical grounding for more traditional meta-analyses of successful interventions and outcomes, (i.e., 'what works' for youth with disabilities), two primary analytic techniques were incorporated: narrative analysis of the interviews, and constant comparative analysis of the documents. Results were analyzed in terms of the thematic structures contained in the narratives of the participants, organized by their life/career stories, and the patterns across time in the documents, organized by the low and high incidence special education literature within and across age groups: public school, transition, and adulthood. Themes were then integrated into three overarching constructs of voice, interdependence and inclusion and represented in a model of "integral inclusion", highlighting some of the factors which support the transformation of society's relationship with persons with disabilities. It was argued that given current social and political contexts impacting educational opportunities, transition outcomes, adult services, and barriers imposed by vestiges of (or in some cases, blatant) attitudes which marginalize persons with disabilities, we are not yet in an "era of inclusion and community membership", but we are headed in that direction.