Behavioral skills training to teach pre-service elementary general educators to conduct descriptive assessments

Abstract

A pretest-posttest control group design with switching replications was used to examine the effectiveness of a one-time, 75-minute behavioral skills training (BST) package. Fifty pre-service elementary general educators enrolled in a classroom management course were shown a video depicting challenging behaviors and were asked to collect antecedent-behavior-consequence (ABC) data. Using the data collected, participants from two instructional groups were asked to hypothesize the function of the problem behaviors. Results suggest a statistically significant increase in correct responses for both instructional groups from pretest to posttest following BST. A series of ANCOVAS suggested that, when controlling for initial pretest performance, BST significantly improved correct responding in posttest when compared to performance on the second pretest. However, participants did not reach an optimal level of performance following a one-time administration of BST. Practical implications for teacher education contexts, limitations, and future research directions are thoroughly addressed.