Incidental Teaching and Direct Instruction Flashcards
What are the 2 Goals for Incidental Teaching?
- Generalization of Behaviour across Stimuli
- Expansion of Language Elaborations
What are two ways to overcome the problems we see in DTT?
- NET
- Incidental Teaching
What is Incidental Teaching?
- Occurs in the natural setting with regular activities (Originated before NET)
- Usually involves some formal manipulation of environment to create motivation
- Capitalizes on child self-motivation
- Teach child with the materials they naturally find
How are reinforcers different with Incidental Teaching?
They are naturally connected to the activity, not candies or tokens, so this helps increase the likelihood of generalization and spontaneity
How to Plan for Incidental Teaching
- Observe child and note their interests and masters skills
- Know what skill to teach in each setting
- Know how to set up the environment to faciliate learning
- Know effective prompting strategy for environment
- Have a plan for data collection
4 Steps to Incidental Teaching
- Creating an engaging setting
- Waiting for the child to initiate communication
- Prompting the child for a fuller, more elaborate request
- Provide the desired outcome
How do Incidental Teaching and Mand Training Differ? How are they similar?
IT -> prompts language expansion
Mand -> prompts verbal behaviour
- Both focus on Natural Environment Training and functional communication, as well as capturing the motivation of the child
What is Direct Instruction?
A specialized instructional program for teaching language and academic skills (more about academics than language)
- Focuses on math, reading and writing
- Well researched!
- Helps children learn at faster rate than typical
What does Direct Instruction Include?
- Scripted content (book per level)
- Instructional pace (steady)
- Lots of practice
- Instructor feedback
- Planned generalization sequence
Other facts about Direct Instruction (from video)?
- Explicit/systematic
- Step-by step
- skill level, not grade level
- Scaffolding!
What is the debate behind Direct instruction? What side does this method focus on
Nature vs Nurture
- focuses on the nurture side -> because changes in learning environment were seen to facilitate improved learning
Who developed DI? Who were they?
Siegfried Engelmann and Wes Becker
- both were interested in effective instructional methods, especially to accelerate cognitions
How does DI connect to the behavioural model?
It extends the model -> it places emphasis on the Antecedents presented to the child (the instructional process and content)
What is the “core” logic of DI?
Faultless Communication and this means that what a child learns is a function of the communication received
- if a child is not learning it is not their fault!! There is a problem with the instruction they are receiving
3 Types of Faultless Communication
- Explicit teaching of rules and strategies (through scripts)
- Example selection and sequencing
- Covertization
What is explicit teaching of rules and strategies through scripts?
- using carefully designed and scripted rules that are concise, consistent, unambiguous and logical
- rules are presented orally and students need to repeat them
-Instructors model the rules - Instructors guide students to apply rules to new exemplars after basic ones are mastered
just repeating rules is not g ood enough -> need guided practice and feedback and the DI program is designed to gradually increase complexity
What is example selection and sequencing
Purposely selecting examples to include both instances and non-instances
- teach instances before non-instances so don’t confuse students
- Students learn rules quicker when both examples and non-examples are presented back-to-back
- Built-in generalization of the guided practice promotes general application of the rule in the future
What is Covertization?
Initial rule instruction that involves observable strategies (e.g. child states rule and applies it) then overt steps are systematically faded to become more “covert” and instructor reduces their leading questions.
- This teaches to eventually read in the head
Faultless communication says that what the child learns is the result of the _______ received?
communication
What is Project Follow Through?
100 000 primary grade underprivileges children to determine the most effective way to educate.
- evaluated 12 approaches for teaching and developed the use of systematic, explicit, clear instruction as the foundation skills of reading and math
Results of Project Follow Through
Children in sites using DI performed better than other models
DI most effective (behavioural analysis is second over all)
- Parent teaching was also good (except in math)
How can we see DI in the classroom?
- taught in clear, explicit units or lessons
- move child from “teacher g uided” to more independent learning
- faultless communication methodology
- instructors receive training specific to DI and assessing children
Characteristics of a DI lesson plan (there is 3)
- 1 Pre-skill or skill is taught per track
- Tracks extend over days/weeks
- Exercises within a track change (built-in generalization)
