Evidence-Based Practice for Teaching Academics to Students With Severe Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

A review of the literature was conducted for articles published between 2003 and 2010 to build a case for the degree to which evidence-based practices were documented for teaching academic skills to students with severe developmental disabilities. This review extended earlier comprehensive work in literacy, mathematics, and science for the population in question. A total of 18 studies met the Horner et al. ( 2005) quality indicator criteria. In general, time delay and task analytic instruction were found to be evidence-based practices. In addition, specific target responses were defined to show academic learning, with the most prevalent target responses being discrete responses; the type of systematic prompting and feedback used most often was time delay, while the component used least often was stimulus fading/shaping; and teaching formats used most often were massed trials and one-to-one instruction.

Fostering learner independence through heuristic scaffolding: A valuable role for teaching assistants

“…The use of modelling and systematic prompting has been proposed by others for the instruction of learners with disabilities (Spooner, 2012). However, these approaches are informed essentially by a behaviourist perspective, whereas our work is influenced by Vygotsky (1978) and scaffolding theory (Holton & Clarke, 2007) and places central importance on the contingency of each adult turn.…”

Math Manipulatives for Students with Severe Intellectual Disability: A Survey of Special Education Teachers

“…The four components in the conceptual model for teaching math included: (a) target early numeracy skills (Sarama & Clements, 2009); (b) use explicit systematic prompting and feedback Spooner, Knight, Browder, & Smith, 2012); (c) vary daily instruction using a story-based lesson ; and (d) promote generalization to grade-level content through concrete manipulatives (Clements, 1999;Maccini & Gagnon, 2000) and embedded instruction (Jimenez, Browder, Spooner, & DiBiase, 2012). Based on the findings of , Jimenez, Browder, and Saunders (2013) developed early numeracy lessons (i.e., Early Numeracy curriculum) to explicitly teach numeracy skills using a story-based approach with the use of concrete manipulatives, systematic prompting and explicit feedback.…”

Frequency of Mand Instruction Reported in Behavioral, Special Education, and Speech Journals

“…Finally, the direction of intervention research may reflect contingencies within the applied contexts. For example, special education researchers have recently responded to calls for increased an emphasis on academic instruction (Spooner et al 2011), which may compete with functional communication instruction.…”