An Analysis of Teacher Responsiveness to Communicative Initiations of Preschool Children with Handicaps

Abstract

This paper presents data obtained in a preliminary study of teacher responsiveness to communicative initiation attempts of preschool children with developmental delays. Teacher-child interactions were analyzed during child- and teacher-directed activities to determine the types of teacher contingent responses to the children's communicative initiations and the initiation behaviors used by the children. Teacher contingent responsiveness to the children's initiations was low for both activities and was much lower for the teacher-directed than the child-directed activity. Analysis of the child initiation behaviors revealed that combinations of behaviors were used most frequently by the children to initiate communication with their teachers. The results suggest that the level of teacher contingent responsiveness may not have been optimal for facilitating the children's language acquisition. Implications for future research and communication programming within classrooms for preschool children with handicaps are discussed.