- I'm Pamela Luft, and I work here at Kent State University in the deaf-education program. My PhD studies were in transition services. However, I was a teacher of deaf and hard-of-hearing students for 15 years prior to that. Today we are going to focus on research-based practice. Why is this important? First of all, IDEA 2004 requires teachers use these practices. Also, research helps us improve outcomes for these students. In terms of research in transition for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, there's not much available. Transition research tends to focus on special-education students as a whole. Deaf and hard-of-hearing students are just small part of that. If they have different outcomes, that does not tend to be reflected in this research. So what do we do? We need to examine the research that's available and analyze to see how it fits with our deaf and hard-of-hearing students' needs and abilities. There are a few things that we should provide, however. We should provide vocational preparation and classes and work experience, but these things should not be provided alone, but integrated with the career-development program. Career development consists of four different elements. It also includes vocational-preparation work experience we just talked about. The first level is career awareness. This occurs during preschool and elementary school, when children are naturally curious-- "What are you doing? What goes on? What is work about?" They learn these things from parents, from friends and family and different people. The second level is career exploration. This occurs during middle school. Students should visit different workplaces. They should be curious and learn about what goes on in these different sites and also combine that with their coursework. Career preparation occurs during high school. They focus on classes to support their interests, that should be also combined with work experience, to learn their different skills. Career assimilation occurs after high school and is about work readiness-- having the appropriate attitudes, skills, and expectations to be career ready. In terms of work experience and career development, many parents and teachers tend to think that this occurs primarily during high school, but this is not true. It is very important for young children to learn about these things to develop a foundation for their later decisions. During elementary school, children should have chores and responsibilities at home and school. It's very important for children to learn some of the different expectations between home and school, as opposed to work. Suppose you ignore a rule at home or at school. You'll get in trouble a little bit, but if you ignore a rule at work, you might be fired, or someone might end up being hurt. It's very important to realize these differences. During middle school, you should go and visit different jobs, try things out, see what they are doing, interview people, observe, and try to narrow their interests down to fit their skills and abilities. Also, you should have different vocational-class experiences to learn about your skills. Perhaps you have some skills, are really fluent in some areas and not so fluent in others. For high school, students should have different classes that match their needs, combined with work experience, for example, during the summer, weekends, and after school. This combination of work experience with classes helps them make a decision that's most appropriate for later. The academic programs should be linked clearly with the other transition services and make this link clear to the students. This is very important. Some examples are functional math. Do students know how to pay the bills, the rent? Research tends to show that deaf and hard-of-hearing students are weak in doing these different functional calculations. Functional science includes what? Health and illness. Do you know what to do? Can they identify it? Also proper nutrition and rest. Functional social studies includes community services, information about where to vote, different agencies, recreational services meetings, and also where to find accommodations for different activities. Where would a student find this? Other important things are graduation and vocational tests. Many states now require that students pass a test for a diploma at graduation. If they fail, they can get a certificate. However, many work and college opportunities do not accept a certificate. In addition, many work and vocational settings now require that students pass a test for licensure. It's extremely important to use academic supports to make people career ready. Disability support services are also extremely important in order to get the appropriate accommodations. Research also shows that requesting information at the right time and the right way is extremely important to later success. Research on deaf and hard-of-hearing students tends to show that about 50% of high schools teach about disability disclosure and accommodations requesting, and about 50% of deaf and hard-of-hearing students tend to make the disability disclosure and request. The important thing is, if you do not ask, you cannot receive these supports. Independent-living skills are very important. However, IDEA 2004 does not require them. Instead, it's an option. However, research on deaf and hard-of-hearing students tends to show that they have lower level of skills and low responsibilities compared to other students in special education. I recommend that all deaf and hard-of-hearing students have this preparation. They should be involved at home with the family and start very early. For example, in elementary school, they should have responsibilities and chores and know the activities of daily living that their family is involved with. How can they help and participate? In middle school, they should have daily and weekly responsibilities and also know all about their own family's daily living activities and skills. By high school, students should have full responsibility for daily and weekly and other skills, as well as learning more advanced skills, in terms of how to care for their home, the outside, their car, and so on. During high school, it's also very important to know about adult rights, linked with responsibilities. For example, about driving, use of alcohol, dating, and marriage and these different things. They have to learn that adult rights link with responsibilities. Another important area is consumer preparation. For example, how do you use credit appropriately? Rent, signing contracts for large purchases, and also problem solving. These are all very important areas for adult living. Across the different areas of student development that we've talked about-- academics, career development, independent living skills-- one question is, how do we get specific and accurate information to support deaf and hard-of-hearing students' success? This is through accurate assessment. Imagine if we have information that's inaccurate or that we've misinterpreted. We could guide them along the wrong path. IDEA 2004 now requires that you must have age-appropriate assessment. Before, we could use skill, interest, or other inventories based on adults. We realized that using adult tests were not appropriate because transition students had different perspectives and experiences. Now we must use them that are age-appropriate. It's also extremely important to find assessments that are specific to deaf and hard-of-hearing students, yet this is very hard to do. So the transition team needs to be very careful in looking over the assessments being used. Several areas can lead to bias based on hearing students. First of all, there may be an expectation that students can speak the language fluently. Secondly, students may not be familiar with the test language itself. Third, the test may expect people to be able to hear and/or speak. And fourth, they may expect that the students have the same experiences growing up, and deaf and hard-of-hearing students do not. The transition team needs to carefully examine the different assessments and evaluate whether or not they're appropriate for the needs and abilities of their students. Transition planning to support deaf and hard-of-hearing students can become fairly complicated. However, there are three resources that can help. The first is the Expanded Core Curriculum. This was originally developed for blind services. They realized that state curricula did not tend to include the critical important skills that blind students needed later in their life. Deaf and hard-of-hearing professionals also realized that the state curriculum did not include key skills needed later. Several states now have developed different expanded core curricula. However, the Iowa curriculum is extremely comprehensive, with many different standards, tests, worksheets, and other forms. It is really fully developed. The second resource is the TAGG. It's a comprehensive set of independent-living skill and related assessments that are important for developing transition goals. They are also now adding more languages, including ASL. The third resource is very important in use of vocational rehabilitation and RCDs, which are rehabilitation counselors for the deaf. This is important because VR has many work, training, community, and other resources that can be used for transition preparation. RCDs also have specific training, focused on working with deaf and hard-of-hearing people. It's very important that you invite RCDs to transition meetings, because what they have worked on to develop and support high-school goals after the student graduates can then continue to college and then employment. In addition, the reason that transition law was passed was to prevent gaps in moving from high school to post-high-school services to occur. In summarizing ways to improve outcomes for student development in transition, we begin at the bottom with academic programming, which also should include independent-living skills and functional academics. Next, we move on to supporting career development and work experience, in conjunction also with career and vocational decisions. These all lead up to the final outcome of comprehensive and appropriate transition planning for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. However, this also needs support from disability support services and from vocational rehabilitation and RCDs. It's important that all of this fits together for student-development outcomes and for each student to learn how to be successful in their life.