Date of Award:

5-2017

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling

Department name when degree awarded

Special Education and Rehabilitation

Committee Chair(s)

Robert Morgan (Committee Co-Chair), Jared Schultz (Committee Co-Chair)

Committee

Robert Morgan

Committee

Jared Schultz

Committee

Keith Christensen

Committee

Timothy Riesen

Committee

Terry Peak

Abstract

More and more students with intellectual disabilities (ID) have the opportunity to participate in a college experience by attending an inclusive postsecondary education program specifically designed to support these students. The goal of these programs is to help students with ID improve their opportunities to find employment that matches their interests, live more independently and enjoy a higher quality of life. To get the most out of their college experience, students with ID need to develop certain personal skills, knowledge, and attributes that will help them be better prepared for a college-based program. The parents of students with ID that have already had a chance to attend such a program can provide us with valuable insight into what types of personal skills, knowledge, and attributes might help other students be better prepared to participate in these inclusive college programs.

The current study began by asking a group of parents of students with ID that had attended at least one semester of an inclusive college program to list the personal skills, knowledge, attributes that they felt were most important in helping a student with ID be ready to attend an inclusive college program. Parents generated a list of 56 items that they then rated based on the level of importance they felt each item had. Only the items that reached a minimum level of importance as rated by at least half the parents were kept for the final list of 33 items. The final results of the study were explored, how these results related to parents, student with ID, special educators, and inclusive college program staff were discussed, and recommendations for future research were presented.

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