Date of Award

Spring 5-2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Educational Leadership

First Advisor

Bryan McCoy

Abstract

The views of a transition/IEP team members of the collaborative efforts of each other have had little or limited viewing. Annually there are approximately six million special education students in the United States of America (Samuels, 2017). While in high school, these students and their transition/IEP team are tasked with preparing them for adult life (U.S. Department of Education [USDOE], 2018). The team’s collaborative efforts are a necessary component of ensuring the success of each student’s adult life (Michaels & Ferrara, 2005).

For students to find success after high school, all transition/IEP team members need to collaborate as best as possible on behalf of the student. Best practices state that collaboration is a key to successful outcomes in any team environment (Arndt et al., 2006). By observing the collaborative efforts of a transition/IEP team, using each team members’ meeting reflection as a catalyst for questioning, and conducting interviews with each team member, then repeating the process to determine if self-reflection and talking through that reflection can improve collaborative efforts in future meetings by all team members was the focus of this study. Findings indicated that not all team members are equally knowledgeable of services and agencies available to students with intellectual disabilities and their families. This lack of knowledge as perceived by team members was the most important reason collaboration was unequal for all team members. Additional research is needed to determine if effectively educating team members, specifically, parents would improve all team members’ collaborative efforts.

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