Goal-setting is a fundamental aspect of special education programs. Personalized goal setting can be very effective for people with intellectual disabilities (ID), yet it is complicated to set and approach goals, owing to the diversity of individuals’ requirements. This lack of attention to goal-setting hinders a deeper understanding of its impact on the effectiveness of educational programs.

An Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is a document that is created to define educational goals and meet the educational needs of ID children in a number of special schools in India. IEPs are most effective when developed collaboratively by a team involving stakeholders. However, collaborating with intellectually disabled children is a complicated task due to the nature of the disability and related communication challenges. Moreover, following up on the set goals becomes difficult as the behavior of children with ID can fluctuate very frequently and can't be predicted. Involvement and active participation are complex domains that need to be mapped in the education of ID children. Perceptions of educators also have a significant impact on the whole process; an educator or any practitioner who is inexperienced is more likely to face difficulty in working with children with ID. Hence, understanding the practice and perception of the goal development and implementation process for IEPs becomes crucial.

The study aims to describe the processes and methods used to engage students with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) in developing and implementing their Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and identify the encountered challenges through a case study of a special school in a metropolitan city in India. To gain insight into how special educators conceptualize and achieve the goals and needs of children with intellectual disabilities, a semi-structured interview study was conducted with a total of 7 educators and staff at the special school, and collected data was analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis.

The findings highlight an iterative process of defining goals, requiring a significant amount of effort from educators to account for the requirements of each child. Defined educational goals are found to be sequential and are often broken down into short, simple tasks, leading to larger functional outcomes. Parental input is considered a primary and essential source of information, and parents are considered active collaborators in the IEP process. The findings also revealed challenges at different steps of this process, including access to accurate background data on a child, ‘regression’ in learning due to breaks or delays, and diversity in behavioral patterns in children. The analysis of the teacher’s perspective underscores the need for a highly individualized, data-driven, and collaborative intervention for children with Intellectual Disabilities, necessitating a need for relooking at existing practices for information gathering and assessment to enhance the participation of ID children.

Keywords: Intellectual Disabilities, Individualized Education Program, Special education, data-driven research, participatory design.