KYAP Model Of Self-Advocacy

The authors of the article focused on students who had more severe intellectual and developmental disabilities and how they can develop their self-advocacy skills. The authors outlined the different steps they took to help these students communicate their needs along with help from teachers and other school staff. Much of the other research on self-advocacy and self-determination focused on students with less severe disabilities. These marginalized students often do not get their voices heard so the researchers hoped that their model would help change that, even the non-verbal students.
The authors pointed out how being able to communicate is a big factor in being able to self-advocate. So it was important to have a speech and language pathologist …show more content…
First there would be orientation and training given to the adult participants in the program. Second would be the "I Can" day, in which the students who were participating in the project would learn about concepts such as choices, making goals, and planning. With the help of teachers, mentors, or other staff the students came up with a goal that they wanted to achieve by the end of the year. These goals were sometimes personal, such as learning to dance, or school related, such as doing better in school. The third step was goal planning and monitoring. Students worked on their goal and examined if there would be any barriers to achieving their goal. While some barriers could be overcome, sometimes they needed to be modified. Students who were non-verbal or had more significant disabilities had teachers and parents help set a goal for them. Throughout teachers and the students would monitor how they were progressing. The last step was the "I Did It" day. Students and the people who helped them would present their goals and the outcomes of the …show more content…
How much of a role did outside factors, such as a student 's family play in the success of each of the goals? If a student had a supportive family would they achieve their goal more successfully? Since this is about building self-advocacy for students with disabilities, is making a goal for a student with a more severe disability really saying that they were successful in becoming self-advocates? All of these questions and shortcomings were not addressed in the paper and so could have an effect on the future implementations of this