Chunmei Zheng’s research while affiliated with University of Kansas and other places

Previous research has demonstrated that for students with intellectual disabilities, improved self-determination skills are positively correlated with productivity and organization during school and quality of life outcomes in adulthood. Despite extensive investigation in these areas, the predictive relationship between self-determination and academic achievement for students with intellectual disabilities has not been fully established. This study utilized the sample from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 of 480 adolescents with intellectual disabilities in the United States in an attempt to provide a possible empirical explanation of the relationship between academic achievement and self-determination, taking into account the covariates of gender, family income and urbanicity. The structural equation model was found to closely fit the data: all path coefficients were statistically significant. The results of this study identify a strong correlation between self-determination and academic achievement for adolescents with intellectual disabilities, indicating a linear relationship of these skills and supporting an increased focus on the teaching of self-determination skills.

Improving collaboration among organizations is a goal of interagency educational teams, but collaboration is typically thought of as an ambiguous concept that cannot be quantified. To assess the collaborative strength of a state-level interagency team in a Midwestern state, team members completed the Levels of Collaboration Scale (Frey et al., American Journal of Evaluation 27(3):383, 2006) for three consecutive years. The team members then utilized the results of the social network analysis to support and sustain collaborative efforts. Findings revealed that the number of partnerships increased and the depth of collaboration expanded across the 3 years. Social network analysis results were utilized to develop collaboration strategies, thus influencing the expansion of the network across the 3-year period.

Research suggests that self-determination skills are positively correlated with factors that have been shown to improve academic achievement, but the direct relationship among self-determination, self-concept, and academic achievement is not fully understood. This study offers an empirical explanation of how self-determination and self-concept affect academic achievement for adolescents with learning disabilities after taking into consideration the covariates of gender, income, and urbanicity. In a nationally representative sample (N = 560), the proposed model closely fit the data, with all proposed path coefficients being statistically significant. The results indicated that there were significant correlations among the three latent variables (i.e., self-determination, self-concept, and academic achievement), with self-determination being a potential predictor of academic achievement for students with learning disabilities.

Interagency collaboration facilitates strong linkages to adult agencies, which improves adult outcomes among youth with disabilities (Kohler & Field, 2003; Repetto, Webb, Garvan & Washington, 2002). State-level transition teams increase collaboration, reduce duplication of resources, improve professional development, and heighten the cross-flow of information (Blalock, 1996; Wehman, 1998). Using social network (Daly, 2010) and focus group analysis (Krueger & Casey, 2000), this mixed methods study examined changes in collaboration, as well as collaborative characteristics and activities, among members of one state-level transition team. Analysis of the social network indicated a significant increase in the network density. Furthermore, focus group results indicated a range of collaborative strategies that built group cohesion and facilitated movement toward improving transition and student outcomes.