How Do Evidence Based Practices Inform an Evidence Based Practice in Psychology Child-Centered and Teacher Coaching Intervention?

Background: When applied within a school setting, the American Psychological Association’s Evidence Based Practice in Psychology (EBPP) Framework proposes that optimal clinical decision-making should emerge from a consideration of the overlapping features of the evidence-based practice, student/family preferences and strengths, and classroom teacher resources and needs (American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice, 2006). A challenge faced by clinicians, parents, and classroom teachers is how best to integrate EBP’s within the personalized context outlined in an EBPP framework. The Collaborative Model for Promoting Competence and Success (COMPASS) is a student-centered, teacher coaching framework based on the EBPP approach (McGrew, Ruble, & Smith, 2015; effect size range 1.1-20).COMPASS is comprised of an initial parent-teacher consultation with a focus on obtaining a shared, holistic understanding of the student with ASD at home and school from those most familiar with the student. Three student goals are identified falling within social, communication, and learning skills domains.

Objectives: To identify what EBP’s are present in the intervention plans of an EBPP-informed intervention such as COMPASS. To determine the frequency that each EBP is used in the different domains and which were utilized most. To identify what EBP’s are common across learning domains of social, communication, and learning skills.

Methods: Twenty-nine sets of teaching plans targeting three goal domains (social, communication, and learning skills) were evaluated for young students with ASD (age range: 3-8 years). Procedure. An initial codebook providing definitions and examples of the 27 EBPs was developed using descriptions from the National Professional Development Center for ASD report on EBPs for students with ASD (Wong et al., 2014). The initial codebook was reviewed and refined for accuracy and clarity by a set of three coders before a final version was approved. The final codebook was then applied to determine what EBPs appear in each section of the teaching plan. EBPs were rated as either present (1) or absent (0). Frequency was calculated by summing the number of occurrences of the EBP within each goal domain and across goal domains to determine which EBPs intersect across domains. Interrater Reliability: Two coders independently coded 20% of the teaching plans and 87% reliability was achieved.

Results: Twenty-two of the 27 EBP’s (81%) were utilized in at least one teaching plan. Within the social domain, 6 EBPs were utilized on average and the most frequent EBP was peer-mediated instruction (27/29 plans). For the learning/work domain, 5 EBPs were used on average and the most frequently used EBP was visual support (VS) (24/29). For the communication domain, 6 EBPs were used on average and the most frequently occurring EBPs were VS and prompting (20/29). Across domainsthe most frequently occurring EBPs were reinforcement and prompting.

Conclusions: COMPASS teaching plans utilized most of the 27 EBP’s within the 29 teaching plans coded. Teaching plans include a variety of EBP’s and those most frequently included within domains were peer-mediated instruction and intervention, visual supports, and prompting. Across domains reinforcement and prompting were used most frequently.