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Abstract
Promoting self-determination and choice opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities has become best practice in the field. This article reviews the research and development activities conducted by the authors over the past several decades and provides a synthesis of the knowledge in the field pertaining to efforts to promote self-determination and choice.
Schalock and Verdugo (2002, 2012) have identified self-determination as a core dimension of quality of life, and over the past two decades, efforts to promote self-determination have been associated with more positive school, community, and adult outcomes for people with intellectual and developmental disabil- ities (IDD) (Wehmeyer, Abery, Mithaug, & Stan- cliffe, 2003; Wehmeyer et al., 2007). Further, choice opportunity and self-determination have become part of the demands by people with disabilities in the self-advocacy movement and these ideas have been incorporated into the disability rights and empow- erment movement (Wehmeyer, 2004, 2011, 2013a). Clearly, efforts to promote community inclusion and quality of life need to include efforts to promote and support self-determination. This paper will examine the state of the field with regard to self-determina- tion and people with IDD.
What is Self-Determination?
Self-determination is a general psychological con- struct within the organizing structure of theories of human agentic behavior. An agentic person is the ''origin of his or her actions, has high aspirations, perseveres in the face of obstacles, sees more and varied options for action, learns from failures, and overall, [and] has a greater sense of well being'' (Little, Hawley, Henrich, & Marsland, 2002, p. 390). Human agentic theories ''share the meta-theoretical view that organismic aspirations drive human behaviors'' (Little, Snyder, & Wehmeyer, 2006, p. 61). An organismic perspective views people as active contributors to, or authors of, their behavior, which is self-regulated and goal-directed action. Self- determined people are, in essence, actors in their own lives, rather than being acted upon.
Our understanding of self-determination draws from our respective theoretical frameworks, each of which has been developed and evaluated within disability-specific and culturally diverse contexts. Space limitations constrain the depth to which we can discuss each framework, so readers are referred to Wehmeyer et al. (2003) for more details.
A Functional Theory of Self-Determination
Wehmeyer (Wehmeyer, Kelchner, & Richards, 1996) proposed a functional theory of...