| Summary: | Individuals with mild developmental disabilities have
traditionally been excluded from full participation in
their career decision making due to the stereotyping of
their perceived incompetence. This view forms a mind-set
or stigma that is recognized as the disability myth.
This study initially addressed the vocational
development of individuals with mild developmental
disabilities. A selected group of seven were identified
from a population of 70. These seven had participated in
a high school intervention program that was vocationally
based and were deemed as most likely to demonstrate
vocational maturity. They provided information regarding
their vocational development through unstructured
interviews.
Donald Super speculated that individuals with
disabilities could benefit from the existing theories of
vocational development; his theory of vocational
development described the seven participants. All seven
were vocationally mature. All had independent adult
status. All were employed and had continuous employment
histories. None of the seven were receiving income
replacement or benefits from dependency programs, such as,
Medicaid, Food Stamps, or Supplemental Security Income.
All seven participants had well defined vocational self-concepts
and well developed self-concept systems. Super
further speculated that persons with disabilities may need
a special application of a vocational development theory
although not a different one; this conjecture was not
applicable to the seven participants.
Further research on the applicability of Super's
theory should focus on other individuals with mild
developmental disabilities who are not employed; those
receiving assistance from income replacement or dependency
programs should also be studied. Qualitative methods will
be essential to conducting these studies. The
applicability of his theory to those with other types of
disabilities should also be tested.
The seven participants seemed to have benefited from
the vocationally-based intervention program. The relative
benefit of each component of the intervention should be
studied. === Graduation date: 1994
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