Overview

The University of Kentucky Interdisciplinary Human Development Institute - University Center for Excellence, in collaboration with its state DD Partners and the KY Department of Education, proposes a Project of National Significance to enhance the inclusion, self-determination, and community contributions of youth with developmental disabilities through a statewide service learning program. This project will build upon Kentucky’s current statewide high school peer tutoring program to provide opportunities for students without disabilities to: (a) learn about the aspirations and needs of students with developmental disabilities; (b) gain information about the range of careers in working with persons with developmental disabilities and their families; and (c) engage in service learning opportunities in partnership with students with developmental disabilities.

For students with developmental disabilities, this project will provide: (a) increased access within general education classes and other school extra-curricular activities; and (b) opportunities to contribute to their own communities by engaging in service learning projects along side their high school peers. An additional component of this program will be the use of high school peer tutors to assist students with developmental disabilities in academic, personal, and career goal setting. While strategies for enabling students with disabilities to set, monitor, and evaluate goals have been successfully implemented (Wehmeyer, Agran, & Hughes, 1998), to date there is no published work on the use of typical peers to support students with developmental disabilities in the process of self-determination. This project will develop specific materials for high school peer tutors to assist students with developmental disabilities in setting, monitoring, and evaluating the achievement of the goals they perceive as most significant in their own lives.

The academic curriculum for this program will be entirely web-based, with peer tutors engaging in a series of interactive modules addressing critical issues in the lives of persons with developmental disabilities and providing a range of supports in general education classes, extracurricular clubs and activities, and school-sponsored service learning projects. In addition, we will work with both the University of Kentucky and Morehead State University to develop “advanced placement credit” for high school peer tutors who successfully complete this course and who are interested in pursuing a degree in education or related careers in supporting persons with developmental disabilities.

This project will use a multi-component evaluation design. Five high school sites, selected to reflect the geographic and cultural diversity of the state, will serve as the pilot sites for the development of the self-determination materials and the protocols for the integrated service learning projects. Across these site, we will evaluate the extent to which this project results in increased access to the general curriculum and to school extracurricular activities for students with developmental disabilities; the extent to which students with developmental disabilities demonstrate increased self-determination skills and improved educational results (e.g., alternate assessments); the benefit of integrated service learning projects for both students with developmental disabilities and their peers, as evaluated by themselves, their teachers, and families; and the extent to which participating peers choose to pursue career goals in developmental disabilities.