Development and Application of College and Career Readiness Framework for Secondary Students with Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

This article proposes a theoretical framework to support college and career readiness for secondary students with developmental disabilities. Further, the study focuses on analyzing the Career and Vocation subject in the 2015 basic curriculum of special education using the developed framework to establish the basis for systematic career education in the secondary special education field. First, we analyzed the framework of the College and Career Readiness (CCR) in the United States. A total of 20 experts in the field of transition education participated in Delphi surveys on content validity and field suitability to modify the U.S. CCR framework, and to make it adequate for a domestic situation. In consequence of the iterative refinement process, the Korean version of the College and Career Readiness framework for secondary students with developmental disabilities was developed and included 6 domains, 16 subcategories, and 58 indicators. Second, we analyzed the relationship between achievement standards and unit objectives of the Career and Vocation subject in the 2015 basic curriculum of special education using the proposed framework. The relevance rate between the developed CCR framework and the achievement standards was low at 29.3% in total, and only 11 out of 16 subcategories were related to the unit objectives. Based on the results, the article provides implications for discussing the meaning of the development of the CCR framework for secondary students with developmental disabilities, as well as for enhancing efforts to improve student capacities for college.