Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a paradigm shift in the delivery of instruction for students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), forcing educators, therapists, and behavior analysts to pivot across programming with little lead-time. This chapter first presents the transition to remote learning for one New York City-based applied behavior analytic school for students with autism. Direct instruction (DI) in the remote learning format is then recommended as an ideal teaching methodology. The chapter then presents preliminary support for the remote use of DI through quantitative data for seven of the learners in this ABA school. Later, these results are discussed with respect to key design features of DI and the applicability of these findings to students in circumstances that would normally preclude them from receiving high quality instruction. The chapter concludes with a brief tutorial to guide educators in adopting this methodology to remote settings.
TopIntroduction
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 130,000 schools in the United States and millions more throughout the world closed their doors for months—in some instances close to a year—to prevent the disease from spreading. In the United States alone, 48.1 million students switched from in-person to online learning (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). Almost overnight, schools were compelled to reconsider how they delivered instruction to children. Educators, school personnel, and school leaders from all levels of education and across the country dedicated time and resources to helping children and families in their communities. Parents and families continued to assist their children despite suffering severe challenges in their own lives. COVID-19’s effects were uneven, and statistics indicate that students with disabilities bore a disproportionate burden (U.S. Department of Education, 2021).
In the 2019-2020 pandemic school year, 7.3 million students ages 3 to 21 received special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act—14% of all public-school students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). Of those students, more than 700,000 had a diagnosis of autism (Office of Special Education Programs, 2021). Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is a pervasive neurological and developmental disorder that affects a person’s ability to communicate and engage with others socially and is associated with restrictive and repetitive behaviors. Autism is thought of as a “spectrum” disorder because of the great variation in the symptoms encountered by people, as well as the type and severity of symptoms. (National Institute of Mental Health, 2022). Individuals on the autism spectrum and their families have been even more vulnerable to negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Althiabi, 2021; Amorim et al., 2020), and because of the disorder’s defining traits, children with ASD were much more negatively impacted (Genova et al., 2021). A hallmark feature of autism is difficulty communicating with others; consequently, children with ASD benefit from nurturing and supportive school environments that consistently challenge their social development. With schools closed for extended periods of time, the pandemic made it even more difficult for children with ASD to learn critical socialization skills. The necessity of social isolation during the pandemic made it practically impossible to communicate with individuals other than immediate family members, which proved damaging to many individuals with ASD (Pellicano et al., 2021).
Children with ASD also benefit from predictable daily routines, which the pandemic made more difficult to maintain. It was not unusual for many individuals diagnosed with ASD to utilize aggression, tantrums, or other maladaptive behaviors during daily tasks to voice their dissatisfaction with the pandemic’s unpredictability (Matson & Adams, 2014). Indeed, Mutluer et al. (2020) discovered a COVID-19-related clinical presentation in people with ASD that mirrors PTSD in terms of increased stereotypies, aggressiveness, hypersensitivity, behavioral issues, and sleep and hunger changes. In their study, all subscales of the Aberrant Behavior Checklist differed significantly before and after the pandemic (Mutluer et al., 2020).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Direct Instruction: A method of instruction initially developed by Siegfried Engelmann in the 1960s, and modified and field-tested with learners. The teacher and student(s) are engaged active learning opportunities wherein the teacher models, prompts and facilitates correct and quick responses while the learner responds to the teacher in 1:1 or small groups. Teachers follow carefully constructed scripts that have been designed with faultless instruction. Frequent and systematic assessment is also hallmark to DI.
Examples: Within Direct Instruction, examples refer to stimuli that demonstrate the quality or qualities of the concept. Examples are presented by the teacher or therapist along with a specific signal that specifies the stimulus is a member of a class of stimuli.
Quality: As used by Engelmann, this refers to any irreducible feature of an example. Qualities include all physical properties of stimuli that are capable of being detected by a person.
Fluency: When learners have skills that can be produced quickly and correctly. A fluency criterion looks at the rate of performance – how many responses can the student produce within a specific amount of time.
Faultless Communication (Faultless Instruction): A logical method of teaching that leads to proper transmission of the concept and removes the risk of confusion, often incorporating examples and non-examples in a well-crafted order. The term emphasizes the teacher and environment’s role in instruction as most critical and relevant in the process of learning.
Applied Behavior Analysis: Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is the science in which the principles of the analysis of behavior are applied systematically to improve socially significant behavior. The term “behavior” refers to a range of skills and actions. Principles of learning are implemented to improve and teach new behaviors that are of social significance. Within Engelmann's system of instruction, a behavioral analysis is used to identify gaps in the learner's repertoire of skills, and to provide remedial instruction.
Project Follow Through: Project Follow Through was an important aspect of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty, since it was aimed to build on the successes of Project Head Start. A total of 700,000 underprivileged children from 170 areas were participated in the project. Parents were given the option of choosing from a choice of educational models for their children. The funds came from the Office of Education and the Office of Economic Opportunity. Various ways and styles of educating children were compared on more than 9,000 Follow Through and 6,500 Non-Follow Through (control) students.
Non-Examples: Within DI, non-examples refer to stimuli that do not possess the quality or qualities of the concept. Non-examples are presented by the teacher along with a specific signal that indicates the stimulus is not a member of a class of stimuli.
Empirical: Observation through the senses is required. The term is frequently used in behavioral sciences to contrast claims that are based on theory or hypothesis rather than data.
Criterion: Instructional objectives that specify performance requirements that must be met.
Learning Mechanism: This expression is used by Engelmann and Carnine to situate the learning process of the learner. The mechanism is assumed to have two properties: (1) to have the capacity to learn qualities from examples, and (2) to have the capacity to generalize on the basis of sameness of quality.