Paraprofessionals in education of children with autism spectrum disorders.
The use of paraprofessionals is probably a common practice in all countries, but the training and supervision of these paraprofessionals is a challenge and data on effective practices are sparse. And as most professionals will agree on is that the skills and understanding of behavior analysis is a vital factor of programs efficacy.
Hall, Grundon, Pope and Romero (2010) have in this issue of Behavioral Interventions published a study providing more data on this issue. In this study they included six paraprofessionals working with children with ASD or at risk of ASD. Providing a workshop and performance feedback by their supervising educators, results showed that even if paraprofessionals learned behavior analytic skills at the workshop there were little or no transfer to the environment their where working with the children. But when performance feedback was given systematically the use of the behavior analytic skills increased.
Even if this study have few participants, and lac data on child progress, it is interesting as it investigates a procedure and format that easily can be implemented in typical homes and regular educational environments.
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