Teacher success is critical to student success, yet teachers are challenged daily to meet their students’ diverse learning and behavioral needs. Of major concern is the time many teachers spend managing student behaviors, which takes time away from instruction. One way to reduce time spent managing student behavior and increase student engagement is to use proactive classroom management strategies. Teachers can embed proactive research-based strategies within their lesson plans to reduce behavior problems and improve achievement for all students, including students with disabilities. This article highlights four research-based proactive strategy categories including whole-group response systems, movement integration, visual supports, and student choice. This article illustrates how teachers can embed strategies from these categories in their lesson planning and includes a lesson plan template with teacher-created examples.
Special educators are encouraged to implement evidence-based practices (EBPs) with fidelity to maximize student achievement. Two national organizations identified Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) as an EBP for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effects of didactic training alone (simulating traditional professional development), and the effects of adding coaching in a mixed-reality environment (TLE TeachLivE™), on special educators’ implementation fidelity with DTT in their classrooms teaching students with ASD. Five special educators who had previous DTT training but were not implementing the EBP with fidelity in their classrooms participated. Results suggest didactic training alone was not sufficient to bring special educators to fidelity of implementation with DTT, but after an hour-long session in TLE TeachLivE™, participants were able to implement DTT with fidelity in their own classrooms. Special educators maintained their fidelity of implementation up to 8 weeks after the conclusion of the intervention.
A deductive, sequential mixed design was used to better understand the internal aspects of performance-based self-evaluation activities as related to teacher preparation. A modified theory of change informed the investigation of a subset ( N = 15) of teacher candidates from a larger study, who all showed significant improvements in their teaching abilities after engaging in video analysis. Teacher candidates’ video analysis activities were further analyzed to better understand their self-evaluation accuracy and enthusiasm for engaging in such teacher preparation activities. Results indicated candidates rated their perceived ability significantly higher than their observed instructional ability at all four timepoints. Candidates who were most enthusiastic about engaging in video analysis with self-evaluation were the least accurate at rating their own instructional abilities. Additional findings about the association between internal factors (i.e., attitude and accuracy) and the implications for self-evaluation as a reliable form of performance-based assessment within teacher preparation are discussed.
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