Abstract
Training teachers to select and implement appropriate function-based interventions may reduce their reliance on behavior specialists and other support staff to help manage their students’ problem behavior in the classroom. Most prior studies on this type of training evaluated outcomes by measuring teachers’ verbal report rather than their implementation of interventions. The purpose of this study was to replicate and extend prior research by training teachers to identify the putative function of problem behavior via assessment of descriptive data, to select the appropriate procedural variation of functional communication training (FCT), and to implement FCT accurately in role play. Five special education teachers participated. Results suggested that behavioral skills training (BST) was highly effective for all participants. These findings have important implications for disseminating behavior-analytic interventions into settings with limited resources.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Megan Skrbec, Naomi Alphonso, Tessa Conaway, Landon Cowan, Fernanda Oda, Amber Prell, Katie Galbreath, Jessica Maldonado, Elizabeth Luna, Michelle Wang, and Alyssa Embry for their help with data collection and simulation training. Funding was provided by Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
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Kally M. Luck declares that she has no conflict of interest Dorothea C. Lerman declares that she has no conflict of interest. Sarah D. Williams declares that she has no conflict of interest. Victoria L. Fletcher declares that she has no conflict of interest.
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All the procedures performed in this study with the human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments of comparable ethical standards.
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Luck, K.M., Lerman, D.C., Williams, S.D. et al. Training Special Education Teachers to Select and Implement Appropriate Procedural Variations of Functional Communication Training. J Behav Educ 31, 350–366 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10864-020-09401-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10864-020-09401-6