Students serving as a cue to increase treatment integrity of teacher delivered interventions

Abstract

Scope and Method of Study: Small N Study - Non Concurrent Multiple Baseline

Findings and Conclusions:

Within the consultative framework, it is the consultant's responsibility to measure treatment integrity and ensure that treatments are being carried out with sufficient levels of integrity. Without high levels of treatment integrity a failure to respond cannot be solely attributed to the intervention but rather low integrity allows for the failure of the intervention to be potentially attributed to extemporaneous variables. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate if students can recruit academic assistance in the form of intervention delivery. Additionally, this study investigated if the effects of teaching students to recruit their intervention would allow the consultant to fade support to natural and manageable levels. Utilizing a small N, nonconcurrent multiple baseline procedure, the present study sought to expand the current treatment integrity research. Two main research questions were addressed within this study: (a) Can students provide a cue for intervention delivery which results in increased treatment integrity? (b) Can student cueing be effectively maintained with weekly consultation? Results indicated teaching students to recruit their intervention increased teacher intervention delivery in all six cases. Three of the students were able to recruit for their intervention more than 80% of the possible sessions following initial training and maintain high levels of student recruitment during weekly reinforcement. As a result, it was concluded that student recruitment can lead to increases in treatment integrity and be maintained by weekly consultant involvement.