Students with developmental and intellectual disabilities have complex communication needs that require well-designed supports to communicate effectively in school settings. Paraprofessionals are often in charge of supporting these students. Unfortunately, they are rarely trained in how to promote communication, and there is limited research on how they might be trained.
The researchers used multiple baselines in this study across behaviors design to test the efficacy of a teacher-implemented training package to train a paraprofessional to provide opportunities for an elementary student with autism to respond, set up opportunities for her to initiate, and implement a systematic prompting hierarchy. The findings of the study demonstrated a functional relationship among the teacher-implemented training and paraprofessional acquisition of the strategies, and paraprofessional implementation coincided with increased student communication.
This study complemented through its findings the previous findings and literature that suggested that paraprofessionals can be trained to implement evidence-based practices to promote the use of alternative/augmentative communication, and extends this literature by demonstrating that a classroom teacher can deliver paraprofessional training effectively.
Reference: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1088357617736052
