Building Causal Agency in Autistic Students through Iterative Reflection in Collaborative Transition Planning

Transition planning is a collaborative process to promote agency in students with disabilities by encouraging them to participate in setting their own goals with team members and learn ways to assess their progress towards the goals. For autistic young adults who experience a lower employment rate, less stability in employment, and lower community connections than those with other disabilities, successful transition planning is an important opportunity to develop agency towards preparing and attaining success in employment and other areas meaningful to them. However, a failure of consistent information sharing among team members and opportunities for agency in students has prevented successful transition planning for autistic students. Therefore, this work brings causal agency theory and the collaborative reflection framework together to uncover ways transition teams can develop students' agency by collaboratively reflecting on students' inputs related to transition goals and progress. By interviewing autistic students, parents of autistic students, and professionals who were involved in transition planning, we uncovered that teams can better support student agency by accommodating their needs and encouraging their input in annual meetings, building relationships through transparent and frequent communication about day-to-day activities, centering goals on student's interests, and supporting student's skill-building in areas related to their transition goals. However, we found that many teams were not enacting these practices, leading to frustration and negative outcomes for young adults. Based on our findings, we propose a role for autistic students in the collaborative reflection framework that encouraged participation and builds causal agency. We also make design recommendations to encourage autistic students' participation in collaborative reflection around long-term and short-term needs in ways that promote their causal agency.