Research-Based Principles and Practices for Educating Students with Autism: Self-Determination and Social Interactions

Abstract

Research-Based Principles and Practices for Educating Students with Autism is a text under development by members of the Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities. The text is intended for use as a professional resource and graduate level text for preservice and inservice educators, psychologists, speech/language therapists and clinicians serving children and youth with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). To familiarize the DADD membership with the content of the text, authors of chapters in the text will present on their topical area at DADD conferences. The first such presentation occurred at the conference in Maui, Hawaii in January of 2010. The topic covered in that presentation, as presented here, was self-determination and social interactions. This article examines the issues of self-determination and students with ASD in three ways; first, we examine the need for interventions to promote self-determination for students with ASD; second, we examine extant interventions that have an empirical basis and might be beneficial to efforts to promote the self-determination of youth with ASD; third, and finally, we propose that a social ecological approach to promoting self-determination is critically important for students with ASD and, indeed, for most students, and provides a useful context in which to engage in such efforts.