Transitions: Empowerment and Agency Podcast by David Poeschl.

Hello, my name is David Poeschl and I'm a parent adviser with Matrix Parents at Marin CIL. This is another in our series of monthly podcasts for the year 2024 to 2025.

Today I want to do an article review, which is going to be the first in a series. And the article I'm going to look at today is called Perspectives of Autistic Students and Their Teachers on Self-Determination and Peer Support.

And it's from the journal Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders. And, the first thing I noticed on the article, which is interesting, is that this is an American written article, University of Kansas, which is a big area of study and learning disabilities and autism. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the same thing. University of Virginia I'm not as familiar with, but all U.S and they use the term autistic instead of people with autism, which is the person first language, which is interesting.

And there's a lot of debate and controversy going on about that now. And I have to say, I go back to the educational use, which is the statutory use, which is people with autism while they're in school, after school. I think it's just a self-selecting mechanism, in my opinion. But, you know, I'm certainly not an expert in that.

So anyway, let's look at the article. What they're doing is that they're looking at, again, self-determination. And I wanted to let you know or just to remind you, if you've heard this before, that self-determination skills are the difference between, in most cases and to a great degree, between the life success outcomes, at least in young adulthood, between autistic, autistic adults and their typical peers.

So what learning these self-determination skills does is allow a student to be able to be independent and, to the best of their degree and to become autonomous. That's really what we're looking for. So let's take a look at the article a little bit. And it says that the little is known about the perceptions of autistic youth, about how interventions, in other words, those interventions that teach self-determination skills, how they're used in high schools and how people feel about them, how the kids feel about it, how the teachers feel about it.

And so what this article does is go through two programs, and I'm not really going to get into the programs themselves, because a lot of these articles are looking at this in the field, and there's lots of programs around for, teaching self-determination skills. So the programs themselves are not the critical point. It's really the programs that are available to you in your child's high school or within your high school.

So, again, I won't go through the, I won't go through the programs too much, but a couple of things that, that we should talk about. And I'm looking down on page two now, and, so we're looking at the definition of and I want to give you a definition of self-determination. And there's lots of different kind of nuanced definitions.

And what they do is they don't really give a, a definitional sort of, you know, dictionary, an answer to it. It's more in the way of this. These are the components that make up self-determination. And so for this article, what they are looking at is choice making. And that means choice making the ability to choose between two alternatives, but also to accept the concept of that, that, that of that choice, decision making, being able to weigh the different options that's in front of you, problem solving.

That's a, you know, a huge thing if you're, you know, coming up with issues, are you able to weigh evidence on either side to be able to come up with a reasonable solution, planning how to plan for the future, how to look, to your daily needs, self-management, which is huge for a lot of people with autism because a lot of times because of sensory input.

So how do you manage that? The those stressors that happened with the, with the, sensory input, self-advocacy, standing up for oneself, being able to let people know what they need, self awareness. You know, obviously that yeah, this is a big one with people with autism and also with the in the next one with the self knowledge. And it has to do with theory of mind and theory of mind.

If you're not familiar with it, is that ability to be able to see something, a problem more from another person's perspective. And that's a real issue with, with kids with autism, because they have to learn that that's not usually, something that they're naturally, naturally born with. So having that self knowledge and self awareness is, is really critical.

And then the article gets into, what the two programs are and one is, pretty structured and is pretty complicated. It's just a series of, activities that are done in high schools to, to present the program. And the other one has to do with peer support. And that's interesting to me, just on the face of that, because there's more and more research coming out that's showing that, people with autism, autistic people, that a really powerful way for them to integrate into society is to have, a mentor.

And I've seen a couple of articles I haven't gotten really deeply into it that look at autistic people mentoring younger adults with autism or children with autism. So I'm really struggling with what that word with the use of language right now. So, again, I think with adults it's autistic. And I think with kids in the system it's with autism.

So sorry about that, conflict you're hearing. So that's really all I want to say about the article and just the, the importance and I and I'm going to do a lot more of these article reviews, and I'll do podcasts about the importance of self-determination and how to teach it another way is for students to get involved in their own Pi IEP process.

And that's my kind of favorite one at this point. So again, there's different variations of ways of looking at this. But the main thing is is getting these kids and I look at it almost as a reintegration into society. And a lot of times by the time they're in high school, a lot of times these kids have withdrawn, they've pulled away because of all the painful experiences they've had socially and probably sincerely and so, you know, that ability to be able to go out and to go to the store, be able to go to a film, be able to go to a restaurant, to be able to, you know, meet someone in a,

in a social situation. How, enriching that is. But at the same time, the knowledge of how that person needs to do that. In other words, they don't want to be out in society if it's terribly uncomfortable, if it, you know, if they do it every day, but if it's once a week. And so you see that self-knowledge and self-awareness is being able to see, really, what if you're autistic, what your needs are and the best way to meet that without trying to meet other people's expectations.

And that's a tough one. Anyway, that's it for the article. Review. And, this is my first one, so is probably terribly disjointed, but we'll see how they go.

Well, that's it for this broadcast of this podcast. Thank you very much. We appreciate you joining us. Remember to call our helpline at (800) 578-2592 for further assistance. Our parent advisers at Matrix Parents at Marin CIL are here to help. Take care now. Bye.

© 2025 Marin Center for Independent Living (Marin CIL). Podcast author, David Poeschl, Parent Advisor at Marin CIL.