ABSTRACT
Youth with exceptionalities represent a broad range of characteristics, strengths, and needs. They also reflect diverse cultural, ecological, economic, ethnic/racial, and geographic backgrounds and experiences. Efforts to understand the outcomes of students with exceptionalities often focus on intervention results and do not consider how individual, contextual, and sociocultural factors play a role both in the intervention process and in youths’ adaptation over time. We discuss how a developmental science framework may guide research to account for the interplay of multiple factors and levels of ecology that contribute to youths’ school adjustment, educational and occupational attainment, life choices, and adult functioning. This framework involves three related concepts: dynamic systems, person-in-context, and lifecourse perspectives. Dynamic systems refer to coordinated and bidirectionally linked factors that influence each other as they collectively contribute to the functioning and growth of students. Person-in-context perspectives involve clarifying how individuals and the settings in which they are embedded are dynamically aligned to coactively contribute to adaptation and outcomes. Lifecourse frameworks focus on the sequencing and timing of developmental experiences in relation to social and historical events that contribute to the opportunities and trajectories of individuals’ functioning and adjustment across their lives. From this framework, we consider key special education services and concepts.
