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• About ChoiceMaker Curriculum
• Choosing Education Goals
• Choosing Employment Goals
• Choosing Personal Goals
• Expressing Goals
• Taking Action
• ChoiceMaker Self-Determination Assessment
• ChoiceMaker Lesson Research
• ChoiceMaker Network

About ChoiceMaker Curriculum

The ChoiceMaker Self-Determination Curriculum is designed to teach secondary students the self-determination skills they need to be successful in adult life. It consists of three strands:

1. Choosing Goals
2. Expressing Goals
3. Taking Action

Each strand addresses teaching objectives in three transition areas

1. Education
2. Employment
3. Personal

The instructional sets contain lessons and videos to teach students to identify their interests, skills, and limits then use this information to set and accomplish goals in different areas of their lives.

Choosing Education Goals

There are three lesson packages, each addressing one of the transition areas:

1. Choosing Education Goals
2. Choosing Employment Goals
3. Choosing Personal Goals.

The lessons and materials in each package provide students school and community-based experiences to help them identify their interests, skills, and limits. The lesson sequence is flexible to fit into the school's existing curriculum and schedule. A student video entitled, Choosing Goals to Plan Your Life, introduces the concepts by showing high school students using the choosing goal process across the three transition areas.

Educational Goals Lessons

• Time Line
• Graduation Requirements
• Credits
• Subjects I Like
• Educational Performance
• Study Habits
• Post-secondary Education Options
• Goals
• Course of Study

Choosing Employment Goals

There are three lesson packages, each addressing one of the transition areas:

1. Choosing Education Goals
2. Choosing Employment Goals
3. Choosing Personal Goals

The lessons and materials in each package provide students school and community-based experiences to help them identify their interests, skills, and limits. The lesson sequence is flexible to fit into the school's existing curriculum and schedule. A student video entitled, Choosing Goals to Plan Your Life, introduces the concepts by showing high school students using the choosing goal process across the three transition areas.

Experience Based Lessons

Interests

• Job Characteristics I Like
• Job Duties I Like

Skills & Limits

• Work, Social, Personal Skills
• Job Duties How I Did

Dream Job Lessons

• Job Clusters
• Dream Job Research
• Dream Job Interview
• Dream Job Shadowing

Choosing Personal Goals

There are three lesson packages, each addressing one of the transition areas:

1. Choosing Education Goals
2. Choosing Employment Goals
3. Choosing Personal Goals

The lessons and materials in each package provide students school and community-based experiences to help them identify their interests, skills, and limits. The lesson sequence is flexible to fit into the school's existing curriculum and schedule. A student video entitled, Choosing Goals to Plan Your Life, introduces the concepts by showing high school students using the choosing goal process across the three transition areas.

Choosing Personal Goals Lessons

• How I Am With Others
• Groups
• What's Important to Me
• Activities
  • Hobbies, Talents, Recreation
  • Relationships
  • Health and Wellness
• School & Community Options
• Choosing Goals

Expressing Goals

Self-Directed IEP

The Self-Directed IEP is a multimedia package used to instruct students on how to manage their own IEP meetings. It includes two videos, a Teacher's Manual, and a Student workbook. The first video, entitled Self-directed IEP in Action, introduces the self-directed IEP process to students, parents, teachers, and administrators. It shows students with different disabilities in classes working on the Self-Directed IEP lessons and describing their experiences using the steps. The second video, called the Self-Directed IEP, introduces and models the eleven steps needed to actively participate or lead an IEP meeting. After watching the Self-Directed IEP video, students complete eleven lessons in a student workbook that match the steps explained in the video. In these lessons, students learn to apply the step to their own lives.

Steps

1. Begin meeting by stating the purpose
2. Introduce everyone
3. Review past goals and performance
4. Ask for others' feedback
5. State your school and transition goals
6. Ask questions if you don't understand
7. Deal with differences in opinion
8. State what support you'll need
9. Summarize your goals
10. Close meeting by thanking everyone
11. Work on IEP goals all year

Taking Action: Making Goals Happen

The keystone self-determination concept is goal attainment. Educators use the Take Action lessons to teach students the crucial skills for attaining their goals. The lesson package consists of a student video, Take Action, teacher lessons plans, and student worksheets. Students learn to break their long-term goals into short-term goals that can be accomplished in a short time period. Lessons teach students to plan how they will attain their goal by deciding: a standard for goal performance. a means to get performance feedback, what motivates them to do it, the strategies they will use, needed supports, and schedules. This plan leads to student action, evaluation, and adjustment. The lessons can be applied to any goal or project.

Take Action Process

1. Break long-term goals into short-term goals
2. Plan
3. Act
4. Evaluate
5. Adjust

ChoiceMaker Self-Determination Assessment

The ChoiceMaker Self-Determination Assessment is a criterion-referenced self-determination transition assessment tool that matches the objectives in ChoiceMaker Self-Determination Transition Curriculum. Each assessment item matches an objective in the curriculum. For each curriculum objective, the teacher rates the "Student Skills" and the "Opportunity at School" to perform each objective. A summary profile graph is prepared displaying the "Student Skills" and "Opportunity at School" across the three curriculum sections. Student self-determination is a function of both the students' skills and the students' opportunity to learn, practice, and express these skills in their environment.

The ChoiceMaker Assessment is useful to document student and program achievements across time and provide suggestions as to where to begin student and system interventions. Test-retest correlation scores for the ChoiceMaker Assessment, conducted with students from several states, are all .8 or above. This means that the same teachers completed the assessment on the same students two times, two weeks apart, and the responses were almost the same.

ChoiceMaker Lesson Research

Summaries of the following journal articles describe effectiveness tests of the ChoiceMaker lessons:

• Allen, S. K., Smith, A. C., Test, D. W., Flowers, C., Wood, W. M. (2001). The effects of the “Self-Directed IEP” on student participation in IEP meetings. Career Development for Exceptional Individuals 24(2), 107-120.
  
  The purpose of this study was to examine effectiveness of the Self-Directed IEP lessons in increasing student participation in IEP meetings. Four high school age students with moderate mental retardation participated in the study. The Self-Directed IEP lessons were modified to encourage IEP meeting participation rather than leadership. Students’ participation was measured, using a skills checklist, in IEP meetings held before and after the students completed the Self-Directed IEP lessons. Students’ participation increased significantly from the meeting held prior to instruction compared to the meeting held after students received instruction.
• Cross, T., Cooke, N. L., Wood, W. M., Test, D.W. (1999). Comparison of the effects of MAPS and ChoiceMaker on student self-determination skills. Education and Training in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities 34(4), 499-510.
  
  This article compares the effect of the McGill Action Planning System and the Choosing Goals lessons from the ChoiceMaker Curriculum. Five students, ages 14-20 with IQ scores in the mild to moderate range, participated in each program. Both groups pre-post scores on the Arc Self-Determination Scale and the ChoiceMaker Self-Determination Assessment increased significantly with the ChoiceMaker lessons producing a greater effect size. Neither group’s responses to transition related questions or participation in their IEP meetings changed significantly. The authors report that this may be due to the scaled down versions of each program used in the study.
• German, S. L., Martin, J.E., Huber Marshall, L. & Sale, R. (2000). Promoting self-determination: Using Take Action to teach goal attainment. Career Development for Exceptional Individuals 23), 27-38.
  
  German, Martin, Huber Marshall, and Sale (2000) found that the Take Action process (using Take Action Modified Lessons) significantly increased goal attainment. Six high school students with mild mental retardation who attended a suburban high school participated in the study. Using a multiple baseline design across the six students, their daily goal attainment significantly increased to 100% following instruction with the Take Action process. By learning how to make adjustments in their goal attainment process, each student not only attained their goals, but changed to selecting realistic goals.
• Snyder, E. P. (2002). Teaching students with emotional/behavioral disorders the skills to participate in the development of their own IEP meeting. Behavior Disorders, 27(4), 340-357.
  
  This study examined the effectiveness of the Self-Directed IEP in increasing students with behavioral disorders and mental retardation participation in their IEP meetings. Five students received group and individual training in the Self-Directed IEP lessons. Students’ skills in four areas were measured in mock and actual IEP meetings before and after instruction: (1) introducing people at the meeting, (2) reviewing past goals, (3) discussing future goals, (4) closing the meeting. The students’ skills increased after instruction. Students also rated the Self-Directed IEP as acceptable instruction.

ChoiceMaker Network

The purpose of the ChoiceMaker Network Outreach Project was to establish teams of trainers in five states to facilitate the implementation of self-determination curricula and materials across each state. Initially 65 people from five states were trained in five self-determination curricula and four self-determination assessments. The state teams received multiple copies of each curriculum. Throughout the project we provided technical assistance and additional training to the state teams, along with other teachers, parents, students, administrators, and agency personnel, as they implemented self-determination instruction in their schools.

Self-Determination Assessment Results

We asked educators who participated in the ChoiceMaker Network project to complete pre and post measures on student self-determination skills. The change in pre and post scores were statistically significant and positive.

 

End of Project Evaluation Results

Participants completed questionnaires indicating the numbers of students, teachers, and schools involved in their self-determination activities. The results from 18 school districts or education areas across 4 states are shown in the table below.

End of Project Survey
	Prior to October 1995	November 1995 - December 1997 (during ChoiceMaker Network)
Schools Schools conducting student self-determination activities	50	228
Students Students involved in self-determination activities	385	4404
People trained in self-determination:
Special Educators Agency Personnel General Educators Administrator Parents Support Staff	73 26 5 1 56 27	671 203 147 154 682 156