Behavioral Patterns in Special Education. Good Teaching Practices

Abstract

Providing quality education means to respond to the diversity in the classroom. The teacher is a key figure in responding to the various educational needs presented by students. Specifically, special education professionals are of great importance as they are the ones who lend their support to regular classroom teachers and offer specialized educational assistance to students who require it. Therefore, special education is different from what takes place in the regular classroom, demanding greater commitment by the teacher. There are certain behaviors, considered good teaching practices, which teachers have always been connected with to achieve good teaching and good learning. To ensure that these teachers are carrying out their educational work properly it is necessary to evaluate. This means having appropriate instruments. The Observational Protocol for Teaching Functions in Primary School and Special Education (PROFUNDO-EPE, v.3., in Spanish) allows to capture behaviors from these professionals and behavioral patterns that correspond to good teaching practices. This study evaluates the behavior of two special education teachers who work with students from different educational stages and educational needs. It reveals that the analyzed teachers adapt their behavior according the needs and characteristics of their students to the students responding more adequately to the needs presented by the students and showing good teaching practices. The patterns obtained indicate that they offer support, help and clear guidelines to perform the tasks. They motivate them toward learning by providing positive feedback and they check that students have properly assimilated the contents through questions or non-verbal supervision. Also, they provide a safe and reliable climate for learning.

Enhancing Learner Motivation and Classroom Social Climate: A Mixed Methods Approach

“…T-pattern analysis detects the temporal structure of complex behavioral observable sequences. THEME software is a powerful research tool for obtaining T-patterns that allows exploring accurately the stronger connections between successively recorded behaviors and underlying pedagogical actions, as related studies have conducted [ 18 , 20 , 23 , 29 , 30 , 32 , 47 , 48 ]. THEME software uses an algorithm to compare all coded behaviors from the simplest to the most complex combinations throughout the detection of a statistically significant chain of behaviors from a great amount of behavioral events.…”

Optimizing Education: A Mixed Methods Approach Oriented to Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR)

“…Because any basic time unit can be used, behavioral structures can be explored in detail and stronger connections between successive recorded behaviors are revealed. T-pattern detection has been successfully used in several research fields (Burgoon et al, 2016; Pérez-Tejera et al, 2018) to reveal hidden behaviors and underlying pedagogical actions (Castañer et al, 2010, 2013a; 2016b; Rodríguez-Dorta and Borges, 2017; Prat et al, 2019a). In sum, T-pattern detection is an analysis technique that scrutinizes all coded behaviors and their combinations, revealing which ones establish a behavior pattern that appears several times throughout the observed sessions.…”

Preschool Metacognitive Skill Assessment in Order to Promote Educational Sensitive Response From Mixed-Methods Approach: Complementarity of Data Analysis

“…We hope that results obtained will help education professionals to provide an educational response tailored to student needs, a key issue in any quality education system (Rodríguez-Dorta and Borges, 2017). This will help children to improve their metacognitive skills, which will imply enhancing their learning and academic success as well as their ability to solve problems throughout their lives and become competent citizens.…”