Meada Hall

Teaching chained skills in a non-school setting using a divided half instructional format

This investigation evaluated the use of dyadic instructional arrangements in teaching chained skills to four students with moderate mental retardation. Each instructional dyad consisted of two students. Each of the three cooking skills was divided into two equal parts, and each student in a dyad received direct instruction on one part of the task analysis during each instructional session. During the following session, the two parts were reversed and a student received instruction on the second part. A constant time delay procedure was used to teach the targeted skills in an off-campus setting. A multiple probe design across skills and replicated across students evaluated the effectiveness of the instructional procedure and teaching arrangement. Results indicate that each of the four students learned the three cooking skills. Implications for future research are discussed.

Teaching Secondary Students with Moderate Disabilities in an Inclusive Academic Classroom Setting

An English teacher and peer tutors used a system of least prompts procedure to teach 4 secondary students with moderate disabilities to write letters within a secondary composition class setting. While students without disabilities simultaneously worked on composition assignments, they taught the students with disabilities to write letters that included the following 4 components: (a) heading, (b) greeting, (c) content body, and (d) closing. A multiple probe design across students evaluated the effectiveness of the procedure. The English teacher collected supplementary data as to the attitudes of the composition class students toward the students with disabilities who participated in their class. Results indicate that it is possible to reliably incorporate direct instruction on functional academic skills within an inclusive setting. However, support for the regular education classroom teacher is desirable. Issues as to isolation within the academic setting and limited teacher interaction are discussed.

Teaching Leisure Skills to Adolescents with Moderate Disabilities

Four leisure skills (i.e., playing cards, selecting a television program, playing a sports videotape, and playing a computer game) were taught to four secondary students with moderate disabilities in a collaborative project developed by a university investigator, a special education teacher, and an English teacher. The special education teacher used a system of least prompts procedure to teach the targeted skills, and nondisabled peers from an advanced English class assessed generalization across persons on an intermittent schedule. The results indicate that the collaborative project had benefits to both groups of students that included an increase in positive attitudes of the nondisabled peers toward their peers with disabilities.

Acquisition of Related and Unrelated Factual Information Delivered by a Teacher Within an Inclusive Setting

Two secondary students with moderate disabilities (one per classroom) attended Advanced English classes with peers without disabilities in a rural high school. In additional to conducting planned daily instruction, each English teacher also systematically presented three sets of information (two facts per set) to each student with disabilities during the course of the class using a parallel treatments design. Each set of information included a fact related to the English class (e.g., “Begin each sentence with a capital letter.”) and a fact not related to the English class (e.g., “The governor of Kentucky is Paul Patton.”). The special education teacher conducted daily probe sessions to document acquisition. Of the six facts presented to each student with disabilities, one student acquired two related facts and one unrelated fact, while the other student acquired two related and two unrelated facts. This investigation implies that students who are fully included can acquire information presented by the regular classroom teacher during the course of a typical class and that teachers can facilitate learning by planning to present such information in a systematic fashion.