Preparing a New Generation of Early Autism Educators: An Interdisciplinary Personnel Preparation Grant

Background

Within both the fields of EI/ECSE and CDS, there are ongoing and critical shortages of personnel to meet the needs of children with disabilities. Currently, reports based on responses from 49 states/territories indicated significant shortages of ECSE personnel for serving children under IDEA Part B (ages 3-21), with most states identifying shortages of both SLPs and special educators (CEC, 2020). In a report by the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (Sopko, 2010), 40 of 41 states responding identified significant shortages in personnel to provide services through IDEA Part C (ages birth to 3). Surveys conducted at both the national and state level demonstrate that school districts and contractors experience difficulty finding personnel to fill positions in EI/ECSE (AAEE, 2021). Project PANGEA works to address this personnel shortage by matriculating providers prepared to enter the field of special education and meet necessary requirements for state and national certification in their respective professional organizations.

The prevalence of ASD is estimated at 1 in 44 children in the US, and data indicates that children are being diagnosed at earlier ages (Maenner et al., 2021; Shaw et al., 2021). Because children with ASD are being diagnosed at earlier ages, they are more likely to enroll special education services during the early intervention years. It is increasingly likely that early career special educators and related service providers will encounter children with ASD on their caseloads and in their classrooms. It is necessary to prepare EI/ECSE providers entering the field to support children with ASD in core areas of need including social communication and interaction as well as regulation (Masi et al., 2017). Tager-Flusberg & Kasari (2013) estimated that 30% of children diagnosed with ASD are preverbal and working on developing functional spoken language through age five. There is, however, considerable evidence to show that young children with ASD who participate in high-quality, evidence-based interventions, can make significant growth in communication and other core domains of development (e.g., Kasari et al., 2021). While the research into evidence-based interventions is promising, there continues to be a research-to-practice gap impacting use of evidence-based ASD interventions by practitioners in community settings. In these settings, evidence-based, efficacious interventions for ASD are rarely adopted, and when implemented, fidelity and sustainability are often a challenge (Dingfelder & Mandell, 2011). While there is robust evidence that community practitioners can effectively implement high quality interventions when trained, they may lack access to training, coaching, and materials to implement such interventions. Therefore, it is critical to capitalize on pre-service opportunities to learn and practice implementation of these evidence-based interventions in highly supportive environments before entering the field. Project PANGEA utilizes coursework and practical experiences to provide scholars with knowledge of and scaffolded experiences to implement evidence-based interventions for children with ASD.