Transition from School to Post-School Life for Individuals with Disabilities

This book is designed to assist professionals in developing and implementing transition services for students with disabilities. Specifically, this book focuses on the importance of assessment in transition planning and targets the various domains that should be included in any school-to-work transition assessment. The book advocates a transdisciplinary school-based approach to transition assessment that involves not only school-based professionals in the assessment process but community agency representatives as well. As such, the book may be useful to a variety of professionals including regular education teachers, special education teachers, vocational education teachers, school counselors, school psychologists, and school administrators, as well as professionals employed by community agencies like Vocational Rehabilitation, Mental Health/Mental Retardation, and Social Services. Most books on transition are written from a special education or vocational rehabilitation perspective by authors with extensive backgrounds in those fields. This book, however, is written from an educational and school psychological perspective and is designed to complement the existing literature on transition by offering a slightly different perspective on the process. All contributing authors are practicing school psychologists who have had extensive experience in the schools working with students with disabilities. They were assigned chapters based upon their interests and experiences and were asked to write their chapters in a way that blended a review of the literature with their personal and professional experiences in working with students with disabilities. After a preface, this book is divided into the following chapters: (1) Introduction to Transition Assessment; (2) Transition Assessment: Focus on Cognitive Intellectual Ability; (3) Transition Assessment: Focus on Academic Achievement; (4) Transition Assessment Focus on Personality and Social Skills; (5) Transition Assessment: Focus on Vocational Interests and Aptitudes; (6) Assessment of Career Maturity and Self-Advocacy Skills; (7) Transition Assessment: Focus on Life Skills; (8) Issues in Transition from School to Post-secondary Education:Focus on Students with Learning Disabilities; and (9) Assessment for Transition from School to Work. Also included are a name index and a subject index.