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LDI PROGRAMS OF INSTRUCTION

Rationale behind program  instructional approach

The demands of today’s workplace, with its emphasis on high technology, strong inter­personal skills, and maintaining market share against global competition, are driving forces behind reform themes in adult and workplace education programs. The higher expectations of the workplace should have changed the way that assessment and placement of young adult students with hidden disabilities and literacy problems into educa­tion, instruction, and employment programs are conducted. In general, the exact op­posite is typically the case.

Most employment and education reform initiatives continue to display a lack of awareness of, sensitivity to, or acknowledgment of the older student with these conditions, who represent the largest identified groups of learners with special needs seeking employment, postsecondary and adult education services. LDI recognizes that many of these individuals are nontraditional learners who do not accurately present their maximum capabilities with traditional assessments and aca­demic approaches.

Many experts have argued that adult transition education programming for individuals with these conditions must be infused into the college and university programs that prepare teachers to work with individuals with LD, ADHD, and Asperger’s syndrome of all ages. They point out that the instructional competencies found in teacher training programs for students with the conditions served by LDI do not fully integrate life skills and transition-planning issues beyond those found in traditional academic con­tent areas (i.e. primarily those related to written language skills). It is their contention that life skills and transition planning must be fully integrated into all instructional and curricular activities currently being used with individuals with LD, ADHD, Asperger’s and related disorders.

Adult Life Domains and Instructional Focus

In consideration of the unique needs of LDI students and the thrust of the program, utilization of Adult Life Domains attempts to organize the various day­-to-day demands of living into a useful format. After studying the conceptualization of adult domains and recognizing the areas of adult functioning, LDI considered the method by which adolescents and adults will be prepared for those domains. The most important criterion is that the selected domains capture the vast complexities of adulthood as best as possible. Adult domains are those areas of adult functioning that require certain mini­mal degrees of competence and independence.

The question asked when developing curriculum in any of the LDI instructional or program areas is “What are the competen­cies these individuals need to know in order to com­petently perform the adult tasks?” Outcomes are examined to determine the competencies needed to perform the tasks of the job. Those identified competencies or objectives are then organized into a curriculum or program of study. The need to utilize adult outcome-oriented curriculum is imperative, even more so in teaching potentially high-achieving individuals with special needs for the basic everyday demands of adulthood.

The identification of curricular content in a life skills curriculum should be based on the behaviors that individuals will need in their specific community environments. These major life demands represent a core from which life skills curricula, competencies, instructional objectives, courses, and activities emerge.

Major life demands reflect those functional tasks or behaviors deemed necessary in the specific community in which the students live and, therefore, need to know in order to function successfully in that envi­ronment. Developing workable levels of competency in these community- or individual-specific life demands are desirable in order to realize the most complete and efficient transition program for each student during their time in LDI pro­grams.

The major life demands represent the events or activities typi­cally encountered by most adults in everyday life. It is from these demands that specific life skills, or the competencies needed to perform major life demands, will be generated to develop program objectives for the student’s Individualized Educa­tion Program (IEP) or Individual Plan of Action (IPA) for post high school participants.

Many adults with ADHD, LD, or other disorders starting out in the adult world after high school lack or cannot demonstrate competency in the skills they need to show employers. In addition to obtaining vocational credentials or higher education degrees, these individuals must learn to recognize the abilities that will enable them to perform the essential functions of a desired job and the aptitudes that will help them acquire the new job skills needed to be part of a self-directed work team.

This task is made more difficult by a shortage of appropriate training programs providing services to this population, limited understanding of how to make reasonable accommodations in the workplace, and a basic lack of insight of many LDI students into how they can cope with and compensate for their deficits.

The LDI program has not shied away from these challenges but rather approaches them with the expectancy of finding the right niche for each student through development of educational, instructional, and employment curricula that match the essential func­tions of targeted careers with the individual’s expressed desires, abilities, and manage impair­ments, as well as available local resources.

The program and student’s experience to date has taught that when reasonable expectations of personal performance are combined with appro­priate interventions, LDI students can and do succeed at levels of accomplish­ment commensurate with their nondisabled peers.