Timetables: Accessing Personal Perspectives of Individuals With Significant Disabilities in the Transition From School

• In Event: 63.079 - Postsecondary Outcomes for Individuals With Disabilities: Supports and Self-Advocacy for Transition

Abstract

Transition out of school into young adulthood is a complex life stage. Research has found individuals with significant disabilities are disconnected from this process. A 6-month ethnographic study gained intimate insights from individuals with significant disabilities as they lived through their transitions. Timetables, or schedules of daily activities, were found to be pivotal in communicating personal capabilities, but their utility for gaining these students’ perspectives to inform the transition out of school was unrecognized. Framed by the capability approach (Nussbaum, 2006; Sen, 1999), this paper demonstrates how artifacts such as timetables can act as expressions of typically unheard perspectives on personal transition priorities and can be used by those supporting transition to reconnect individuals with significant disabilities to their own transition.

Authors

• Sarah M Hart, University of Hartford

• Mary F. Hill, University of Auckland

• Janet S. Gaffney, The University of Auckland