Self-Determination

Description of the Strategy

Promoting and enhancing the self-determination of people with disabilities has become an important focus of disability services and supports across the life span, particularly in the context of education. The educational emphasis on self-determination emerged as a curricular focus for students with disabilities in the late 1980s, although the construct itself has its historical roots in the philosophical doctrine of determinism, dating back to the 17th century. Determinism is the doctrine proposing that all events, including human behavior and actions, are lawful effects of preceding causes. Philosophers from John Locke through Jean Paul Sartre debated the degree to which human behavior was indeed the direct effect of human experience, thought, free will, and volition or was predetermined or indeterminant. ...