Classroom-based Social Skills Instruction for Severely Handicapped Preschool Children

Abstract

Social skills instruction has been a neglected aspect of educational programs for young severely handicapped children. This paper offers suggestions, drawn from a variety of research literatures, for building classroom-based social skills instructional programs. Important features of classroom programming included allotting a specific portion of the class schedule but also providing opportunities for generalization across the day. The differential effectiveness of play activities and materials for supporting social skill instruction are noted, and a post hoc analysis of a peer-mediated intervention that demonstrated treatment by activity effects is briefly described. A number of potential intructional target behaviors are identified and two forms of classroom instruction for promoting social skills are described. The advantages of using peers as instructional agents are highlighted and the importance of access to socially responsive, nonhandicapped peers for facilitating generalization of social skills for severely handicapped children is emphasized.At the beginning of this decade, Fredericks presented an important study (Fredericks, Moore, &c Baldwin, 1982) that examined the longterm effects of preschool special education for moderately and severely mentally retarded children. After three, four, and five years in the public school system, children who had been enrolled in preschools for two years performed significantly higher on measures of language, academic, self-help, and motor skills than children who had received TECSE 4(3), 97-116 (1984)

Communication Skill Building in Young Children With and Without Disabilities in a Preschool Classroom

“…How ever, teachermediated intervention strategies may be needed in generalization conditions to continue to encourage inter actions between preschoolers with disabilities and their typically developing peers. Strategies such as teacher arrangement of children with disabilities into groups that contain more socially skilled children (Guralnick & Groom, 1988;Odom & Strain, 1984), teacher prompting and prais ing (McConnell, Sisson, Cort, & Strain, 1991), and group contingencies on the social interactions of an inclusive group of children (Lefebvre & Strain, 1989) would be appropriate techniques provided that the teacher does not attempt to direct the children's play, as this has been found to hamper peertopeer interaction with typically develop ing children (Carta, Sainato, & Greenwood, 1988). It may be unreasonable to assume that preschoolers with disabili ties should be able to generalize newly learned skills to an untrained classroom context without teacher assistance.…”

Training Supervisors in a Collaborative Team Approach to Promote Peer Interaction of Children With Disabilities in Integrated Preschools

“…There has been considerable attention in the professional literature to procedures that promote the social competence of children with disabilities in integrated preschool settings (e.g., Guralnick, 1990;Odom & McEvoy, 1988;Odom & Strain, 1984a). Several studies have found that placement of these children in regular preschools is not sufficient to produce improvements in their social behaviors (Beckman, 1983;Beckman & Kohl, 1984;Guralnick, 1981;Honig&McCarron, 1988;Ipsa, 1981;Odom & McEvoy, 1988;White, 1980).…”

“…The manual emphasized the importance of the collaboration of resource and classroom teachers on the development of a plan for the entire class. Areas of curriculum and activities, teacher instructional behaviors, and physical arrangements were selected for their correspondence to the three classroom variables identified by Odom and Strain (1984a) The supervisor was instructed to give feedback to teachers without specific direction or correction.…”

Peer-mediated teaching and augmentative and alternative communication for preschool-aged children with autism

“…These include (a) the presence of naturally occurring distractions in inclusive classrooms (Charlop & Walsh, 1986;McGee et al, 1992); (b) the personal characteristics of the peers including their age and social and communicative competence (Carter & Maxwell, 1998); (c) the extent to which peers and children with autism become reliant on teacher prompts (Goldstein et al, 1992;McGee et al, 1992); (d) the effects of fatigue associated with studies conducted over a long period of time (Odom & Strain, 1984a); and (f) the characteristics of the children with autism, including the presence of selfstimulatory behaviours (Strain & Kohler, 1998), their social and communication skills (Strain & Kohler, 1998), and their responsiveness to peers (Charlop & Walsh, 1986). Carter and Maxwell (1998) noted that children without disability are less likely to persist in interactions with children with autism who are not responsive.…”