The Effects of Teacher Perceptions on Fostering Engagement during Dyadic Play Interactions with Students with ASD

Background:  Children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are less likely to be jointly engaged with a play partner than typically developing children (Adamson, Bakeman, Deckner, & Romski 2009).  Being in a joint engaged state during play provides educators an optimal environment to target social communication skills, such as joint attention.  It is especially important then for teachers to use strategies that promote engagement for students with ASD.

Objectives:  The aim of this study was to investigate how teachers’ perceptions about their students with ASD influenced their use of strategies to engage with their students during dyadic play interactions.  Specifically, we examined how teachers perceived their students’ ability to control of their ASD related behaviors, and how this perception relates to strategies that foster engagement.

Methods:  

Participants: We included preschool aged students with ASD (mean = 48 months), 82% male, and from diverse ethnic backgrounds (12.1% African American, 30.3% Caucasian, 18.2% Latino, 15.2% Asian, and 18.2% other).  Twelve teachers from six ASD preschool classrooms (two teachers from each class) located around the greater Los Angeles area participated. 

Measures: Teachers completed questionnaires rating their students’ ability to control behaviors associated with ASD:  social interaction, non-verbal communication, repetitive interests/behaviors, and sensory seeking behavior.  For these four domains, teachers were given a brief description of behaviors associated with ASD, and asked to rate each child on their ability to control those behaviors.  Scores across all four domains were totaled to create a composite score representing teachers’ perceptions of each student’s ability to control ASD related behaviors.  Teachers and students were filmed during a ten minute dyadic play interaction in the classroom.  Videotapes were scored for teachers’ appropriate use of strategies to promote engagement during the play interaction, resulting in an overall teacher strategies score.  Strategies included appropriate matching of affect, response to dysregulation, providing opportunities for students to initiate play, responding to student initiation of play and communication, and modeling language matched to verbal ability.  Students were administered the Mullen Scales for Early Learning (Mullen, 1989) to assess expressive language.

Results:  Multiple regression analysis revealed that teachers’ perceptions of a student’s ability to control ASD behavior predicted overall teacher strategies scores during dyadic play interactions, while accounting for students’ expressive language ability (β = .015, p < .05).  Teachers’ perceptions of a student’s ability to control ASD behavior accounted for an additional 14% of variance in teacher strategies scores (DR² = .147).  Correlation analysis of specific strategies showed that teachers’ perception was positively correlated with appropriate responding to child initiated social communication (r(45) = .35, p < .05) and appropriate language strategies (r(45) = .31, p < .05).

Conclusions:  These findings indicate that teachers’ perception of students’ ability to control ASD behavior is associated with strategies used during play interactions.  Teachers tended to more appropriately use strategies promoting engagement when students were perceived to be better able to control their ASD behavior.  Specifically, teachers scored better in actively responding to the student’s initiations and using language that matches the student’s abilities.