ABSTRACT
School-based occupational therapists are well-equipped to prepare adolescents to transition from the education system to work and live in their communities, but they report challenges in securing their place on post-secondary transition planning teams. We argue that occupational therapists’ efforts to advocate for their role in post-secondary transition could be strengthened by a deeper engagement with what is considered “best practice” in transition planning: improving students’ ability and opportunity to exercise self-determination. In this commentary, we review the self-determination evidence-base; identify congruence between the underlying philosophies of self-determination and occupational therapy; and highlight gaps in existing self-determination models that occupational therapists are uniquely posed to fill by focusing on self-determination as they support transition age students.
Acknowledgments
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Notes
1. The Individualized Education Program (IEP) team is made up of the student, their parents or caregivers, and educators and professionals who collaboratively create the IEP, a legally binding document outlining the student’s current levels of performance, goals, and needed services and supports (U.S. Department of Education, Citation2004).
2. We note the similarity to occupational therapy interventions (Kramer et al., Citation2014; Polatajko, Mandich, Miller, & Macnab, Citation2001).