Effects of an Asynchronous Online Intervention on Secondary General Educator Knowledge, Application, Confidence, and Generalization of the Predictors of Post-school Success

Federal legislation has mandated students with and without disabilities be prepared for college and careers (ESSA, 2015; IDEA, 2004). Students with high-incidence disabilities experience less success than their peers without disabilities (Newman et al., 2011). Initially, college and career readiness efforts lacked a focus on students with disabilities (e.g., Conley 2007, 2008), but recent efforts have increased the focus on students with disabilities (e.g., Morningstar et al., 2017). The predictors of post-school success appear to be a viable option to bridge both efforts. Students with high-incidence disabilities spend at least part of their day in general education classes (NCES, 2017), but general education teachers report wanting additional information to prepare students with high-incidence disabilities for college and careers (Kwiatek, 2017). General educators identified the predictors of post-school success as relevant, important, and feasible for implementation (Kwiatek et al., 2021). Coupling the alignment between secondary transition and college and career readiness, the predictors of post-school success appear to be an ideal option to provide general educators with professional development to prepare students with high-incidence disabilities for college and careers. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the effects of an asynchronous online intervention (i.e., General Educators Now Embedding Research [for] Adult Life in Educational Design [GENERAL ED]) on general education teachers’ knowledge of research-based, in-school predictors of post-school success. Results indicated a functional relation between the asynchronous online intervention and increased knowledge of three predictors of post-school success. Effect sizes were large for increased knowledge of the predictors of post-school success. Additional measures included application; confidence; generalization; and social validity (i.e., feasibility evaluation, intervention rating scale). Finally, limitations, suggestions for future research, and implications for practice will be discussed.