Dennis E. Mithaug

Promoting Causal Agency: The Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction

Teachers seeking to promote the self-determination of their students must enable them to become self-regulated problem-solvers. This article introduces a model of teaching, The Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction, incorporating principles of self-determination, which enables teachers to teach students to become causal agents in their own lives. This model was field-tested with students with disabilities. Students receiving instruction from teachers using the model attained educationally relevant goals, showed enhanced self-determination, and communicated their satisfaction with the process. Teachers implementing the model likewise indicated their satisfaction with the process and suggested that they would continue to use the model after the completion of the field test.

A Report on the Colorado Statewide Follow-up Survey of Special Education Students

In April of 1982, the Colorado Department of Education authorized a follow-up survey of students completing special education services in 1978. A total of 234 graduates from programs in 26 administrative units responded. The results of the survey suggested that special education programs have been influential in preparing handicapped students for post-high-school adjustments in the community. Although most graduates were employed, their earnings were at minimal levels. Furthermore, most of the respondents lived at home with their parents, suggesting a pattern of financial instability and family dependence. Respondents indicated a need for more training in specific areas such as social participation and job search and selection. They also reported that special education teachers have been more helpful in finding jobs for them than their parents.

Increasing Self-Determination: Teaching Students to Plan, Work, Evaluate, and Adjust

A study was conducted to determine if secondary-age students could use self-determination contracts to regulate the correspondence between their plans, work, self-evaluations, and adjustments on academic tasks. The authors examined the impact of these contracts on the plan, work, evaluation, and adjustment behaviors of 8 secondary-age students with severe emotional/behavioral problems. The students completed daily self-determination contracts to schedule their work on academic tasks, plan for work outcomes, evaluate progress, and adjust for the next days activity. One-way repeated-measures (ANOVAs) yielded 15 significant effects for the correspondence between plan and work, between work and evaluation, between evaluation and adjustment, and between adjustment and the next day plan. Pre- and postassessment found significant academic improvement.

Adaptability Instruction: The Goal of Transitional Programming:

This article describes an instructional model designed to teach students generic employment adaptability skills. Failure to acclimate to a dynamic work environment has been suggested as a primary reason for job termination. The need to adapt to changes in work environments and maintain acceptable levels of work performance is critical for employment success. The model describes how to teach students to adapt to these changes and includes four major components: (a) decision making, (b) independent performance, (c) self-evaluation, and (d) adjustment. Implications for transitional programming are addressed.

The Development of Procedures to Assess Prevocational Competencies of Severely Handicapped Young Adults

This paper extends and elaborates on previous discussions that indicated the need for basing prevocational training activities upon the requirements of job entry. By following the suggestion that the proper sequence for developing a prevocational program is first to analyze the requisites for entry into a job, then to assess the clients skills vis-à-vis those requisites, and finally to prescribe training objectives to reduce identified needs, this paper presents assessment data from 56 workshops, developmental centers, and activity centers in five northwestern states that specify the requirements considered important for entry into sheltered employment. The subsequent data analyses yielded a prevocational assessment Instrument (PAI) derived from the entry level requirement data, and corresponding prevocational objectives derived from the PAI. These analyses demonstrated (1) the functional relation between job requisites, needs assessments, and training objectives and (2) that this relation can be empirically verified, i.e., the data emanating from an analysis of job requisites determine the nature and scope of the assessment instrument, which, in turn, determines which training objectives are appropriate for a particular client.

Self‐Determination, Causal Agency, and Mental Retardation

Publisher Summary The self‐determination construct has proved to be useful in explaining the motivational variables that cause people to act based on personal choice and preference as opposed to other, external causal factors. This chapter presents an overview of the respective theoretical applications of the self-determination construct to identify personal characteristics that lead people to act as causal agents in their lives and to become more self‐determined. Subsequent to this, the chapter introduces Causal Agency Theory that has been developed from the respective theoretical models of self‐determination and that serves as a means to better understand how people become self-determined. The chapter presents an examination of the historical meanings of the self‐determination construct, within both psychology and disability services, upon which the work has been based and which frames the understanding of the construct.

Case Studies in the Management of Inappropriate Behaviors during Prevocational Training

This paper presents four case studies that demonstrate the use of different management strategies to decrease or eliminate the undesirable behaviors of clients in a prevocational training program. The presentations and discussions focus upon the simultaneous pursuit of skill training and behavior management rather than working towards these two objectives sequentially, e.g., first behavior management and then skill training. The rationale for this approach is that discouraging inappropriate behaviors should be accompanied by procedures that encourage appropriate ones. In the prevocational program, appropriate behavior was defined as correct responses to specific training tasks. The four cases include such problem behaviors as excessive out-of-seat and running behaviors, incessant and irrelevant verbal behavior, screaming and shrieking, excessive hysterial laughing, refusal to work, self-biting, self-pinching, violent tantruming, and noncompliance. The tactics that were employed to control, decrease, and/or eliminate these behaviors include shaping, differential reinforcement of other behaviors, ignoring, timeout, and negative reinforcement. In all cases, the management strategies were in effect while new skills were trained. The clients received positive reinforcers for appropriate task responses while being discouraged from responding inappropriately.

A Replication Survey of Sheltered Workshop Entry Requirements

Replication of a survey to identify sheltered workshop entry requirements (Mithaug & Hagmeier, 1978) was completed in Kansas. The original survey involved 56 respondents representing sheltered workshops, developmental centers, and activity centers in five northwestern states. Replication in Kansas involved 15 respondents. Spearmans rank order correlations and Pearsons product moment correlations for Kansas-vs.-Northwest sample, Kansas-vs.-combined sample, and Northwest-vs.-combined sample were all significant from zero beyond the .001 level. This lends support to the notion that there are agreed-upon entry requirements for sheltered employment that are reliable across states and regions.

On Persistent Pursuits of Self-Interest.

From my vantage point, self-determination is characteristic of all us humans regardless of our capabilities, disabilities, or idiosyncrasies. It is evident when we act on our circumstances to get what we need or want and when we persist in those pursuits until situations change in the right direction for us. It is accurately represented by the phrase persistent pursuits of selfinterest, and by how we regulate our expectations, choices, and actions to engage those pursuits. And it is protected by policy, law, and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution—and of course it is idealized by the Declaration of Independence claim, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” [italics added] (Mithaug, 1996a). This is the perspective on self-determination I have advanced over the years (Mithaug, 1991, 1993, 1996a,b, 1998a,b, 2003), and I found it useful here in commenting on the articles in this issue. For example, the article by Martin, Woods, Sylvester, and Gardner (2005) led me to consider the possibility that choice opportunities are the only means of reversing the other-determined patterns of treatment that people with severe disabilities are forced to deal with daily. Ward’s (2005) claim that self-determination is all about the SELF and must be advanced by authentic choice opportunities made me rethink the definition of self-determination and its relationship to choice. Wehmeyer’s (2005) redefinition of self-determination prompted me to consider whether his new definition fully dealt with the control issue he sought to resolve. The Wood, Fowler, Uphold, and Test (2005) review of research interventions suggested to me that other areas of research may have been overlooked and that use of direct instruction to provoke choice making may be counterproductive over the long term. Finally, the study by Zhang (2005) broadened the scope of my comments substantially, focusing as it did on the cultural and socioeconomic determinants of self-determination in children and youths with disabilities. With this advance summary of my comments in mind, I offer the following additional thoughts on the issues of choice, the self, control, research interventions, and capacity versus opportunity that were raised by this timely set of articles on selfdetermination.

Case Study in Training Generalized Instruction-Following Responses to Preposition-Noun Combinations in a Severely Retarded Young Adult

In this study a 16-year-old severely retarded male was trained to respond to instructional requests that included the prepositions “in,” “on,” and “beside.” The training consisted of presenting untrained nouns and prepositions in isolation to develop appropriate discriminations before combining them into multiple-word phrases. Once discrimination was established between four direct-object nouns, four prepositions, and four prepositional-object nouns, the subject was trained briefly to respond to two-word combinations that included a direct object and a prepositional object. Following this training, there were increases in the subjects correct responses to untrained two-word requests and to expanded, untrained phrases containing random combinations of four direct objects, four prepositions, and four prepositional objects. The accuracy of the instruction-following response was evaluated in a second experiment in which the experimenter altered the structure and delivery of the instructional request. When the experimenter added irrelevant cues to the three-word request, “put the ___ ___ the ___,” the subjects accuracy decreased; and when the experimenter paused between the third and fourth words, e.g., “put the ___ (pause) ___ the ___,” accuracy increased. These results indicated that generalization to new instructional forms may depend upon training in the appropriate responses to relevant and irrelevant verbal cues as well as to different styles of delivering the request.