Guiding Questions for a Culturally Responsive Framework During Preemployment Transition Services

Many secondary educators, rehabilitation counselors, and transition teams lack adequate preparation to collaborate while delivering preemployment transition services (pre-ETS) to culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students (Benitez et al., 2009; Neubert et al., 2018). Hence, there is a need to ensure service providers (e.g., secondary special education teachers, vocational rehabilitation counselors, and transition specialists) have the necessary skills to collaborate using culturally responsive practices in delivering pre-ETS to CLD students with disabilities (SWDs). The guiding questions and scenarios in this article are framed in a way that will allow education teams to consider ways to collaborate using a critically conscious approach to support CLD students. As seen through the vignettes, service providers must hold each other accountable at every stage of planning pre-ETS for CLD SWDs to develop culturally responsive transition plans, emphasizing critical consciousness. Critical consciousness can advance foundational practices for transition teams to collaborate at the professional level and with the student and family.