Prevention of absenteeism and school failure in students with ASD: Improving the transition from primary to secondary school

Self-determination (SD) is the ability of individuals to know themselves, control their lives, plan and reach their goals and self-advocate. Are the skills, knowledge, and beliefs needed to engage in goal-directed behaviours based on an understanding of one’s strengths, limitations, and self (Field, Martin, Miller, Ward, & Wehmeyer, 1998). SD focuses on reforming systems to provide greater opportunities for choice and self-direction and on providing people with disabilities, in this case students with ASD, skills and information so they can express self-determination in their own lives. It is focused on five principals: freedom, authority, support, responsibility and confirmation.

SD plays a vital role in several contexts. It has been shown to increase life satisfaction in later life (Ekelund, Dahlin-Ivanoff, & Ekelund, 2014), promote physical activity and weight loss (Silva et al., 2010; Teixeira et al., 2012), moderate occupational burnout (Fernet, Guay, & Senecal, 2004), and motivation (Gagné & Deci, 2005) among many others.

Within an educational setting, the integration of SD skills such as self-regulation, decision-making, and action planning, has been shown to help students evaluate and set personal goals, become more autonomous, SD learners, and increase the sense of control over their learning (Eisenman, 2007).