Abstract:
Within the classroom setting, teachers often lack the necessary skills to assess, manage and intervene with problem behaviours of children with ASD. This can lead to undue stress on both teachers and students. There is a critical need for teachers to be equipped with the skills to assess the function of problem behaviours and to design and implement strategies that reduce these behaviours. A behavioural skills training programme was used to teach two teachers how to implement the Interview Informed Synthesised Contingency Analysis (IISCA), developed by Hanley, Jin, Vanselow and Hanratty (2014) and IISCA-informed functional communication training (FCT) for application with three of their students. Students were aged between six and 10 and were all diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of this behavioural skills training programme on teacher's implementation accuracy further, assess the effects of these procedures on children's problem behaviour. A two leg multiple probe design was used to evaluate teacher's implementation accuracy of both the IISCA and IISCA-informed FCT. Results identified the behavioural skills training package was effective in teaching teacher's accurate implementation of these procedures. A multi-element design was used for the IISCA conditions with students and the logic of a changing criterion design was used to evaluate the IISCA-informed FCT. Findings identified the function of problem behaviour for all student participants, with FCT decreasing this behaviour and increasing an alternative behaviour and overall compliance. Overall, these results suggest behavioural skills training is an effective method to teach teachers and the IISCA and IISCA-informed FCT are reliable and valid methods to assess and manage problem behaviour. Limitations and future research are discussed.