Self-determination for adult students with intellectual disability : – a case study within Special education for adults

The purpose of the study is to describe self-determination within a group of adult students with intellectual disability in the school form Special education for adults. In order to describe the purpose more clearly, two main questions have been raised: how does the students’ self-determination appear in the teaching situation and how do the teachers reason about the students’ self-determination? A qualitative case study was chosen as a research method. For the case study two interviews with teachers and four observations of classroom situations were conducted. During the four observation sessions, four students and one teacher participated. In this study, hermeneutic and empowerment are used as theoretical starting points. Using a hermeneutical approach, the material was interpreted and the result came to be thematized based on content and meaning. To discover how self-determination was expressed in the group, empowerment theory was used as a tool for analysis. The results were then analyzed from two different perspectives: process and outcomes, but also from different levels: individual, organizational and community level. The study shows that self-determination is rooted in the group. Even though the study shows that students’ self-determination is taken into consideration, this work is not an active, conscious choice from the teachers