One of the significant contributions of this study is the verification of transition practice by examining various components of the hypothesized latent variable model of transition involvement, including the construct meaning of each latent trait and their
bivariate relationships; meanwhile, overall dynamics among the four latent variables were also investigated in the structural model of transition involvement. Too often, researchers in special education view teacher knowledge as effective teaching that is content specific and can be evaluated and validated as a single element. In such narrow and assumed direct relationships, important factors could be left out and a spurious relationship could mask the truth. The methodology applied in this study opens a new possibility in the transition research community to approach what researchers intend to examine. Perhaps most importantly, the findings of this study demonstrated that factors that influence educators’ transition involvement are multi-dimensional and dynamic.
This study established the theoretical construct for each latent trait in the model and examined these four latent traits empirically, as very few studies have documented the reliability and validity information of instruments administered in the field of transition. This study also demonstrated how educators’ personal and professional characteristics positively influence their perceptions of interagency collaboration and their transition involvement through a certain relationship with school characteristics.
The effects of school characteristics on both educators’ perceptions of interagency collaboration and transition involvement are associated with the effects of personal and professional characteristics on these two variables. Spurious relationships existed between school characteristics and educators’ perceptions of interagency collaboration, as well as educators’ transition involvement. When considering or controlling for the effects of personal and professional characteristics on both educators’
perceptions of interagency collaboration and transition involvement, the effects of school characteristics on these two variables vanished. A spurious relationship existed as well between educators’ perceptions of interagency collaboration and their transition involvement when the direct effect of educators’ personal and professional characteristics on their transition involvement was not included. The results of these analyses distinguished the effects of personal and professional characteristics from the effects of school characteristics and educators’ perceptions of interagency collaboration on these relationships to be more important and influential.
While findings in prior research have demonstrated that the role of interagency collaboration has an influential impact on successful outcomes of transition programs (Kohler, 1993; Kohler et al., 1994; Morningstar & Kleinhammer-Tramill, 1999; Rusch et al., 1992), this study empirically revealed that educators’ personal and professional characteristics, including their transition professional background and special education commitment, play a more significant role in educators’ perceptions of interagency collaboration and their involvement in these transition programs. The results of this study should not be construed that school characteristics are not important to assist educators’ interagency collaboration or that educators’ perceptions of interagency collaboration is not important to impact educators’ transition involvement, but the relationships among these factors are dominated by educators’ personal and professional characteristics, which demonstrated a stronger impacts on educators’
perceptions of interagency collaboration as well as their transition involvement. The discovery of this study expands on the findings of previous studies and provides information concerning the powerful influence of educators’ personal perspectives on the success of transition programs.
This study contributes to the theoretical advancement in the field of transition by expanding on the findings that have been proposed in previous studies, explaining the success of transition practice. Personal characteristics, an important element to educators’ transition involvement, were identified as a critical factor overshadowing the relationship between educators’ perceptions of interagency collaboration and transition involvement. When educators perceive higher levels of transition professional training, they have higher levels of understanding of interagency collaboration and are more competent to be involved in collaborative activities and, finally, may demonstrate better practice in providing transition services for students with disabilities. The findings demonstrate that personal and professional characteristics are key in contributing to educators’ recommended best transition practice.
The model developed and tested in this research provides a theoretical enrichment for the study of recommended best transition practice. Many factors contributing
to the success of transition programming emerged from several investigations, both empirically and theoretically. This model can be utilized to examine different mediating factors and compare their commonalities to determine changes in the interplay among elements in transition involvement. For example, the Taxonomy for Transition Programming revealed five important indicators to “best” transition practice (Kohler, 1996), including interagency collaboration, student-focused planning, student development, family involvement, and program evaluation. Like the factor of interagency collaboration examined in this study, the other four factors can be investigated by using this model. The theoretical model may be helpful in directing future research in two aspects. First, each element relates to components in the model that should be examined and evaluated to provide reliability and validity information;
once these are identified and provided, then the research may further proceed to investigate the dynamic relationships among components, including their roles and influences in the model.