Specially designed instruction (SDI) is at the heart of special education. The broad legal definition of SDI allows special educators to customize it for students, but could lead to role ambiguity, particularly in inclusive classes where most students with learning disabilities receive services. To examine interpretations of SDI, we conducted a systematic literature review. We identified 73 relevant documents and conducted a content analysis to determine how authors defined what SDI is, who provides it, where it is provided, and why it is offered. We found that conceptualizations of SDI varied widely across documents, and even contradicted each other at times. We present our findings and discuss implications of them for implementation of SDI in practice.
Children initiate social interactions to greet, ask questions, invite peers to play, and for many other purposes. However, failure to initiate social interactions is one of the social communication criteria that are required to diagnose autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and may limit social opportunities for children with ASD. Several researchers examined different interventions to teach social initiations to elementary‐aged children with ASD. The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the interventions that were used to teach social initiations to elementary‐aged children with ASD and their outcomes in social initiations, maintenance, generalization, and social validity. The reviewed interventions were generally helpful in teaching, generalizing, and maintaining social initiations for elementary‐aged children with ASD. Although limited, social validity evaluations support the interventions, target behaviors, and/or outcomes. Gaps and implications for professionals and researchers were discussed.
Stay-Play-Talk (SPT) is a peer-mediated intervention used to increase social interactions between preschoolers with developmental disabilities and typically developing (TD) peers. This intervention has been found to be successful in increasing play and reciprocal conversation amongst children with and without disabilities. The following describes how to implement a Stay-Play-Talk intervention with children who use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices in a preschool setting.
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