Effects of Coaching on Handicapped Children's Social Behavior and Teachers' Attitudes in Mainstreamed Classrooms

Abstract

The efficacy of a cognitive intervention technique carried out by trained student teachers for enhancing the social skills and social acceptance of mainstreamed handicapped children was evaluated. The effect of training student teachers to implement a cognitive coaching technique and the effect of the student teaching experience on student teachers' attitudes toward mainstreaming were also assessed. 26 first-through fourth-grade mainstreamed handicapped students were identified as socially at risk and randomly assigned to 3 treatment conditions: cognitive coaching, individual instruction in an academic subject, and no intervention. Student teachers were trained to conduct the cognitive coaching and individual instruction procedures. Significant differences between the groups of children were found on teacher evaluations of student change, but not on sociometric and observational measures. Student teachers' attitudes toward mainstreaming were found to change, regardless of the experimental treatment they conducted, in the direction of their supervising teachers' attitudes over the 5-week intervention period.