Moving Toward Participation-Focused Goals for Students With Disabilities: Outcomes of a Knowledge Translation Program...

Area of Science:

• Allied health interventions
• Knowledge translation in education
• Disability studies

Background:

• Meaningful participation in school activities is crucial for allied health interventions.
• Current school-based practices often prioritize skills over participation in individualized education plans (IEPs).
• Integrating participation-focused approaches into school settings remains a challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of a participation-focused knowledge translation (KT) program on goal setting by school-based therapists.
• To examine changes in the formulation of individualized education plan (IEP) goals for students with disabilities.

Main Methods:

• School-based therapists (n=101) underwent a 15-week, 30-hour participation-focused training program.
• IEP goals were analyzed at the beginning (T1, n=135) and end (T2, n=95) of the training.
• Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMMs) compared goals against seven participation criteria, with goals also categorized by domain.

Main Results:

• Significant improvements were observed across all seven participation criteria (p < 0.001).
• The probability of goals being activity-focused increased from 56% to 96%, and situated in real-life settings from 55% to 95%.
• Goals increasingly addressed social participation (76.8% vs. 32.8%), play (41.0% vs. 20.3%), and leisure (24.2% vs. 7.4%), while targeting skills/body functions decreased from 38% to 5%.

Conclusions:

• The knowledge translation program successfully shifted therapists' goal formulation towards participation in meaningful activities.
• Goals expanded beyond academics to encompass social participation, play, and leisure.
• Further research is needed to assess the long-term sustainability of these changes in practice.