The Development of Self‐Determination and Implications for Educational Interventions with Students with Disabilities

Self‐determination is, increasingly, recognised as an important educational outcome if students with disabilities are to succeed both in and out of school. This article presents a definitional framework of self‐determination, describes the development of this outcome, and discusses the implications of this research for educators.     

“Why do dogs pant?”: Characteristics of parental explanations about science predict children's knowledge

Using a new method for examining parental explanations in a laboratory setting, the prompted explanation task, this study examines how characteristics of parental explanations about biology relate to children's knowledge. Parents (N = 148; M_age = 38; 84% female, 16% male; 67% having completed college) of children ages 7–10 (M_age = 8.92; 47% female, 53% male; 58% White, 9.5% Black, 9.5% Asian) provided answers to eight how and why questions about biology. Parents used a number of different approaches to address the questions, including providing more mechanistic responses to how questions and more teleological responses to why questions. The characteristics of parental explanations—most notably, how frequently parents provided correct responses—predicted children's performance on measures of verbal intelligence and biological knowledge. Additional exploratory analyses and implications for children's learning are discussed.     

Classification of the hearing impaired for independent living using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale

Training hearing-impaired persons in independent living skills has become a focus of education and rehabilitation programs for the hearing impaired. Yet, few programs and assessment instruments are designed to evaluate a person's potential for acquiring independent living skills. In this study, the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale was used to classify 118 hearing-impaired persons in groups based on their ability to be trained in independent living skills. Cluster analysis was used to group the subjects according to four domains: communication, daily living, socialization, and maladaptive behavior. The results indicate that the behavior scale can be used to classify hearing-impaired persons according to their ability to acquire independent living skills. The cluster analysis resulted in three groups. The persons in the lowest group did not have the most severe hearing losses, but they were more likely to have additional handicaps. This suggests that additional handicaps may be more important than degree of hearing loss in determining whether hearing-impaired persons can acquire independent living skills.