Department of Exceptional Student Education

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) impacts one in every 44 children in the United States (CDC, 2022) and is characterized by marked deficits in social communication with the presence of restricted interests and repetitive behaviors. Students with ASD are increasingly being educated in the general education classroom and are expected to meet the curricular demands thereof (Roberts & Webster, 2020). Due to the core features of their disability, these students often experience significant challenges in written expression. Writing, across content areas, is a primary means in which student learning is measured and evaluated. The COVID-19 pandemic forced educators to explore the use of technology, through the application of synchronous and asynchronous instructional models, to meet the needs of all students while also providing access to Evidence Based Practices (EBPs) and rigorous content (Cox et al., 2021). This study examined the effects of an intervention package consisting of video modeling and virtual coaching on the use of a procedural facilitator (PF) as a planning tool on the overall written quality of the opinion writing with elementary school-aged children with ASD. Writing quality was measured by the presence of planned paragraph elements, Correct Word Sequences (CWS), and Total Words Written (TWW). The significance, acceptability, and effectiveness of the intervention package was also explored.
Results indicate a functional relationship between the intervention package and the presence of planned paragraph elements. The intervention package did not directly impact CWS or TWW. Participant perceptions of the intervention package were generally positive. Caregiver perceptions of the intervention package were generally positive. Implications of the present study are discussed along with limitations and recommendations for future research.

This study intended to examine factors potentially contributing to teacher retention and attrition at the local (district) level and the costs associated with this teacher movement. A secondary data set from a large urban school district in the southern United States served as the unit of analysis for this study. Demographic data on 25,724 teachers, from 2010-2019 were used in the analysis. A correlation, multiple regression, chi-square, and a demographic frequency distribution were run for each of the three criterion variables: teacher job attrition, teacher school attrition, and teacher retention. The predictor variables used in the analysis were gender, certification, total number of years teaching, and race/ethnicity. Student demographic data from the district were used as a comparison to teacher data from the same school district. Results indicated trends particular in teacher movement, whether job or school, impact the number of years a teacher stays in teaching. Special education certified teachers appear to be the most vulnerable to teacher movement. Teacher retention (leaving) averages over 17% each year over 10 years, costing $36 million dollars annually or over $367 million dollars over 10 years. At that rate, this district could experience a complete turnover of staff in only 5.7 years. Latino teachers are underrepresented in this teacher population and are out of proportion with the majority Latino student population. Black teachers change jobs and schools at statistically significantly higher rates than their White or Latino peers. National data are not longitudinal, and do not track teacher job movement, only teacher school movement. Current local data are critical for educational agencies, administrators, and decision makers to combat the teacher shortage. Findings from this study may inform the field about factors, trends, or patterns that contribute to teacher retention and attrition.

Social validity of interventions is often conceptualized as a triad of the social significance of goals, the acceptability of procedures, and the importance of intervention outcomes (Wolf, 1978). Social validity measurement is considered an essential part of quality single-case design studies. Yet, the practice has been inconsistently reflected in behavioral and educational journals. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the state of social validity in scholarly journals, published by the Council for Exceptional Children and its divisions between 2016 and 2020. The focus of the study was not only on the prevalence of social validity assessments in these journals, but also on possible relations between social validity and other elements of the study. The results indicate that 71.9% (220 of 306) of all single-case design studies published by the Council for Exceptional Children contained an assessment of social validity. Less prevalent was the assessment of Total Construct social validity, which included the measurement of social validity of goals, procedures, and outcomes. Participants’ ages were positively correlated with the presence of social validity assessments; however, studies involving both children and adults tended to favor adult voices in social validity reporting. The results also indicate that while the journals in the study compared favorably to other journals regarding social validity practices, there remains some room for improvement. Efforts should be made to diversify participants’ voices, elicit social validity responses from younger participants, improve the depth of social validity reporting, and broaden the range of tools to assess the social validity of interventions.

Research suggests spending time outdoors and with natural materials can benefit all young children across different areas of development. However, children with developmental disabilities often have fewer opportunities to engage with nature as a result of the limited understanding and negative views about nature expressed by their caregivers and educators. This study examined the effects of a professional development training package on the knowledge, perception, and application of nature-based teaching strategies of early childhood educators who teach young children with developmental disabilities. It also explored how teachers’ implementation of nature-based activities support children’s developmental outcomes.
Results showed the professional development training was effective to some degree in increasing teachers’ knowledge, primarily in their sharing of strategies and ideas for incorporating natural materials and outdoor spaces in learning activities. Following the training, teachers demonstrated a significant shift in their views about different aspects of nature. Teachers were also able to develop action plans to implement nature-based learning opportunities into their practice. Moreover, they reported these activities supported the developmental outcomes they set forth for the children with developmental disabilities in their class. Limitations and challenges that arose are discussed as well as the implications for future research.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) commonly present with reading comprehension impairments that impede their academic achievement and independent living. Research suggests that intervening on listening comprehension deficits of preschool children with ASD may contribute to improved reading comprehension proficiency in the school aged years. Dialogic reading is an empirically supported shared reading method known to increase the oral language and listening comprehension of young children with and without language impairments prior to formalized schooling.
This study utilized a single subject repeated acquisition design to evaluate the effect of a parent-delivered dialogic reading intervention on the independent and accurate responding of preschool children with ASD. Overall, results showed that the dialogic reading intervention was highly effective for increasing the independent and accurate responding for two of the three participants; however minimally effective for the third.
Although the parent participants demonstrated varying levels of procedural fidelity to the dialogic reading procedures, they perceived the intervention to be both feasible and effective when implemented with their preschool children with ASD. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.

This study was conducted to investigate factors that contribute to resilience in students with learning disabilities (LD). The risk-resilience framework provided the theoretical base for selecting school and personal factors that might predict resilience. School and personal data were requested from large, culturally and linguistically diverse samples of individuals diagnosed with LD. A 12 variable model and three cluster models (combined variables) were developed. Discriminant analysis and tests of significance of hit rates were conducted to assess the accuracy of the full model (all 12 variables) to the prediction of resilience, and full versus restricted model testing was done to assess individual variable and cluster (combinations of some variables) contributions to the model. Additionally, analyses of environmental, intrapersonal, and interpersonal cluster models were investigated to determine their relative contribution to the prediction of resilience in relation to the others. Results of the full model analysis and subsequent tests of significance of hit rate indicated modest cross validated classification accuracy for the total group, resilient group, and non-resilient group. However, the model was not significantly better than chance, overall, at predicting resilience and non-resilience in students with LD. Results of the analysis of individual predictor variables’ and clusters’ contributions to the model’s classification accuracy indicated that no individual variable within the full model, nor cluster of interrelated variables contributed significant
incremental improvement in classification accuracy above and beyond that which is available from all other variables contained in the full model. The independent analysis of interrelated personal and school related factors clustered as environmental, interpersonal, and intrapersonal clusters revealed that, as unique and separate models, classification accuracy of cross-validated group cases were less than optimal for each cluster. The results further demonstrate that resilience is affected by both internal and external factors. Although the results also demonstrate that factors work together, a great deal is still to be learned regarding factors affecting resilience as well as their interplay in clusters of factors that affect resilience.

Peer, staff, and faculty members who mentored college students with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) completed self-reflections and digital interviews, and participated in focus groups. The information was used to determine whether the mentoring experience affected their attitudes and beliefs regarding individuals with ID as well as whether mentor personal growth occurred as a result of participation in the mentoring experience. The research suggested that participants from all groups of mentees did experience a change in their attitudes and beliefs regarding those with ID. Those changes in attitude and beliefs were overwhelmingly positive. Peer, staff, and faculty mentors also reported many benefits from participation in the mentoring experience including but not limited to increased self-awareness and self-improvement.