Supporting New Teachers of Students With Significant Disabilities Through Virtual Coaching

Abstract

New teachers of students with significant disabilities are expected to use evidence-based practices that build academic and functional skills from their first day on the job. Yet, these teachers may struggle with applying information learned in their preservice coursework to their daily instructional practices. One widely accepted means of supporting new special educators is mentoring and coaching. However, geographic and time constraints often limit the amount and quality of mentoring and coaching. This article provides a framework of virtual coaching for supporting new teachers working with students with significant disabilities in a way that addresses these access to coaching issues and describes means of incorporating multiple, integrated online technologies.

A Randomized Clinical Trial Comparison Between Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) and Adult-Driven Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) Intervention on Disruptive Behaviors in Public School Children with Autism

“…As well, the interventionists met FoI in a short period of time with excellent child outcomes. The use of technology to provide coaching to geographically remote areas may be useful for educators who lack mentors within the school site, who wish to update their implementation of evidenced-based strategies and receive feedback on their teaching, or who may need assistance in developing programs with behaviors for which they have little experience (Israel, Carnahan, Snyder, & Williamson, 2012). There is great need for empirically supported interventions globally and this type of remote technological training may offer a method for improvement of services in distant areas.…”

The Effects of Mentor Instruction on Teaching Visual Supports to Novice, Special Education Teachers

“…This presented a problem for the participants who needed to invest time in the production of visual supports because the visual support was of lower quality. Israel et al (2013) examined the use of virtual coaching for novice special education teacher. It was the researcher's objective to create a PD and mentoring combination, which would not be time-consuming and could be used at the novice teachers' convince.…”

“…However, only a few studies have been conducted on the use of video-based mentoring being used to for PD for novice special education teachers. One study conducted by Israel et al (2013) examined the uses of virtual coaching as a method of mentorship for novice teachers, who teach students with significant disabilities; however, the coaching model differs from the video-based methods being used in this study.…”

The Effects of Bug-in-Ear Coaching on Pre-Service Behavior Analysts’ Use of Functional Communication Training

“…There is now enough research supporting the use of BIE coaching in teacher education that it has been recommended as part of mentoring for new educators in rural areas (Israel et al, 2013). Given the similarity in the roles of teacher coaches and behavior analysts, BIE coaching may also be effective in preparing behavior analysts, both as a means to help them acquire behavior analytic techniques and also as a resource for coaching the direct care providers with whom they will be working.…”