Modeling skills, signs and lettering for children with Down syndrome, autism and other severe developmental delays by video instruction in classroom setting.

Abstract

Education is a human right providing opportunities for all students to maximize their personal, social and academic development. The present emphasis on accountability has focused the discourse on educational improvement because of the perceived link between the ability to be globally competitive and the quality of schools. The belief by governments and the public that the current levels of student achievement are not good enough has created a sense of urgency. Operating in this environment, educational leaders face competing policy pressures and agendas including demands for accountability for the education of students with special needs. What types of interventions, in special education can enable personal, social and academic development? What are the effective methodologies? School districts are still in a reactive mode coping with issues of accountability, new educational mandates, funding changes and parental demands. Assistive technology helps students with special needs to learn. Passive video mode ling described in this paper may address this new direction in special education for achievement, accountability and collaboration with parents. Typical instructional strategies for children with severe developmental delays often include interactive modeling techniques with instructors delivering physical and verbal guidance and social responses such as Good job! or Good girl! meant as rewards for appropriate student behavior. This response-contingent prompting (Morgan & Salzberg, 1992; Skinner, Adamson, Woodward, Jackson, Atchison, & Mims, 1993) is often used in combination with interactive modeling where the instructor literally leads the student by the hand so that the student sees him/herself modeling the behavior (Robertson & Biederman, 1989). But other modeling techniques use passive modeling strategies (Ezell & Goldstein, 1991; Shelton, Gast, Wolery & Winterling, 1991; Wolery, Ault, Gast, Doyle & Griffen, 1991). In this modeling technique the student merely observes the model's behavior without directly interacting. The basis of social learning theory is that learning can occur through such passive observation of behavior (Bandura, 1971). A teaching intervention found to be effective is the use of video modeling or the use of taped sequences as exemplar of desired behavior (Delprato, 2001; D'Ateno, Mangiapanello & Taylor, 2003). Video modeling when combined with passive modeling can assist in the acquisition of learning. Robertson & Biederman (1989) have reported in a meta-analysis of all previously reported research that the relative efficacy of interactive modeling is not statistically supported. As early as 1991, Biederman, Ryder, Davey and Gibson found that passively trained tasks were performed better than those interactively modeled. Passive observation has been recently applied to task learning in laboratory situations for children with severe delays (Biederman, Stepaniuk, Davey, Raven & Ahn, 1999; Biederman, Fairhall, Raven & Davey, 1998; Biederman, Davey, Ryder & Franchi, 1994; Biederman, Ryder, Davey & Gibson, 1991). In these studies which used a within-subjects design (discussed in detail elsewhere, e.g., Robertson & Biederman, 1989), children were instructed using live models in life skills under two contrasting conditions-active (hand-over-hand) modeling vs. passively observed modeling. In this design there is perfect control of subject-relevant variables such as diagnosis, age, sex, and prior learning, because each child receives both conditions. Any significant differences in training outcomes are attributable to the differences in training conditions. In fact, evidence over a decade of research has consistently indicated that the standard instructional practice of interactive (hand-over-hand) modeling in classroom settings may be counterproductive in teaching fine motor skills to students with little or no active language and with other severe developmental delays (Biederman, 1993). …