Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress International Special Education Conference Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity? 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland

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In Service Training in Special Education in Brazil on Teaching and Investigation

Maria Amelia Almeida
Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São   Carlos,   Brasil

Nunes, Ferreira, Gast and Mendes (1998) conducted a study in Brazil about thesis and dissertations produced in the field of Special Education, and they concluded that there were a reduced number of studies about intervention practices in contrast to other kinds of research.

 Nunes and Nunes (1987) had already called attention to the fact that experimental studies in Special Education were rare when compared to other kinds of research and discussed the possibility of the use of single subject research designs.

The single subject research designs were first described in the the literature by Baer, Wolf and Risley (1968) in the first issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. Those designs gained attention in the scientific community and were later described by many other reseachers, such as: Hersen and Barlow (1981); Kazdin (1982) Alberto and Troutman (1982), Reynolds and Kearnes (1983), Tawney and Gast (1984), Barlow and Hersen (1984), Richards, Taylor, Ramasamy and Richards (1999). According to these authors, even though this kind of reseach design is inserted in the context of applied behavior analysis, it had also been used to evaluate the effects of different kinds of intervention in many other areas.

In the area of Special Education, this kind of design is strongly indicated by Tawney and Gast (1984), where teachers and other professisonals can act as researchers in their work settings with their own students, since, according to these authors, one of the objectives of Education should be to change students behavior in a positive way.

Almeida (2003), conducted one research study whose main objective was to investigate the frequency with which single subject research design had been used in Brazil in the production of theses and dissertations.   The data was collected from a study conducted by Nunes, Ferreira, Mendes and Glat (2001), in which they had analysed 467 dissertations and theses in the area of Special Education defended in Brazil up to that time. The main result of this study, demonstrated that of these 467 theses and dissetations, only 24 empolyed single subject research design methodology. Of these, 83% of the studies employed AB design which, according to Tawney and Gast (1984) is not considered a research design, since it is limited by numerous threats of validity (history, maturation, testing, data stability, subject attrition, reactive intervention, among others).   Also, the AB design provides weak correlational conclusions and for this reason it has been described as “quasi-experimental” (Campbell and Stanley, 1966; Gloss, Wilson and Gottman (1978); Kratchwill, 1978).

Objective

Considering the above discussion, the objective of this study was to investigate the effects of numerous inservice trainings with teachers and other professionals, whose main objective was to prepare these professionals to conduct research at the same time they performed their work with their students in Special Education contexts.

METHOD

Participants

The criteria to be included in this study was that participants should: (a) be enrolled in a specialization (not at master degree level) accredited course offered by a specific public (state) university where the researcher worked; and (b) be working with special students in special education services. Professionals from different areas could participate.

According to the above criteria, there were 20 participants, of whom 10 teachers, 1 nurse and teacher, 1 psychologist, 2 social workers and 6 physical education teachers. There were three male (all physical eduction teachers), whose ages ranged from 24 - 31 and 17 female, whose ages ranged from 23 to 45.

Settings

Most of the studies (18) were conducted in special schools. Only one was conducted in a public health clinic and one in a special class in a regular school. The main places where the study was conducted was at student’s own classroom patio, bathroom, gym, community.

Students

The target students of these studies were persons with special needs, mainly with the diagnosis of mental retardation. Some of them had mental retardation associated with language delays, autism, and cerebral palsy. Also, two studies involved at risk children.

Procedures

This in service training lasted about ten years and was conducted as follows:

• During the specialization course work, special education teachers and other professionals took a research methodology course, whose instructor was the author of this study. In this course, the participants interested in participating in this research had to design an intended project using single subject research design methodology. In this first version of the project, they needed to clearly describe, at minimum, the objective, the main description of the participants, an initial description of the dependent and independent variables and select the design to be employed.
• After the project had been approved by the instructor, the participants started having individual meetings (once a week) with their advisor, who is also the author of this study. During these meetings, they discussed the research design methodology , every step of the intervention procedure to be implemented, the recording system, interobserver agreement, how to collect and how to graph the data, and the ethical implications of their study. Also, during these meetings, the advisor suggested readings for literature review.
• The researcher observed each participant conducting the intervention sessions at least once a month. After the observation, the researcher had a meeting with the participant to discuss aspects of what had been observed. During these meetings, the researcher also conducted reliability checks in order to verify the accuracy of the data collection instrument.
• Participants were supposed to turn in written products every month. The advisor read these products and gave them feedback about the clarity of their written work.

RESULTS

Figure 1, demonstrates the results of this research. According to this figure, of the 20 described studies, only two studies employed AB design, one employed reversal design, two employed changing criterion design, one employed multiple baseline across behavior, and the majority employed multiple baseline across subjects.

Picture 1: Information about the studies: area, design, subjects, setting, IV, DV, results.

AB Design

As has been stated, the author was aware of the threats to validity in this design, discussed previously. However, an intervention was needed in a school with a mentally retarded mother and her baby boy. Also, in a health clinic, an intervention was necessary for an adolescent mother and her baby. In these two cases, the lack of other subjects did not permit the implementation of a more sophiscated design, such as multiple baseline across subjects. Also, since the professionals were dealing with child development and maturation, the ethical implications of the use of a multiple baseline across behavior was discussed because it was necessary to carry out interventions for first and third subjects (Alberto and Troutman, 2000). Given this situation, the AB design seemed to be a more ethical choice. The researcher suggested simultaneous replication of the procedure within the same subject in order to test the strength of the procedure. The results of both studies demonstrated that the procedure was also effective for the other behaviors. The main results of these studies demonstrated that after intervention, the mothers (adolescent and mentally retarded) were were able to stimulate their at risk babies and that their babies increased their development scores.

Reversal Design (ABAB)

According to Figure 1, only one study employed an ABAB design, also referred to as “reversal” or “withdrawal” design (Baer, Wolf and Risley, 1968). According to the literature, this design permits the most powerful demonstration of experimental control because it requires introduction and withdrawal of the intervention (Tawney and Gast, 1984). In this particular case, since this design involves the withdrawal of a successful procedure, researchers in Brazil are always parsimoniously careful in using it. For this particular case, both researcher and participant, after analysing the problems that these four students caused during reading and writing classes and came to the conclusion that reversal design could be a good design to test the effect of the intervention, which was relaxation sessions after Physical Education class. Also, it was thought that the intervention had to be applied to the four students at the same time. Therefore, it would be difficult to apply a design such as multiple baseline (Tawney and Gast, 1984; Alberto and Troutman, 1999), in which intervention is applied to each participant in different moments. The rationale was that the children that were not undergoing intervention could well exhibit behaviors far worse during reading and writing classes. Also, these children’s behaviors needed immediate attention, since they were affecting other children’s performace in reading and writing activities. The results of the study demonstrated that .the application of the design was very successful in demonstrating that the children’s inadequate behaviors decreased everytime intervention (relaxation sessions) was applied. Also, according to the classroom teacher’s report, when chidren were undergoing intervention, they demonstrated better performance during reading and writing activities.

Changing Criterion Design.

According to Hartman and Hall (1976) this design is appropriate when teachers and other professionals wish to evaluate instructional progams that require step-by-step changes in the performance of the target behavior. In the context of this study, it was applied in two situations, as shown in Table 1. In one case, the classroom teacher was worried about a boy with a diagnosis of mental retardation associated with autism who was extremely isolated and did not allow any kind of physical contact. In this particular case, a procedure was designed for him to allow his hair to be cut. The intervention consisted of different phases, which made him able to allow his hair to be cut gradually, by different people in different places. In the other case, the classroom teacher was concerned with mild retarded children who were having troubles with Portuguese Orthography. In this particular situation, procedures to teach spelling   were introduced gradually until they learned how to solve the main spelling problems in Portuguese Language. The application of this design in these studies appeared to be very powerful in each case, since the isolated child became more sociable with people in different situations and the children with mild retardation were able to deal with Portuguese Orthography problems.

Multiple Baseline Design

The majority of   the studies employed multiple baseline designs. The choice for this design in these cases, is not surprising, since according to Tawney and Gast (1984) this design has been widely used in educational settings. In these particular case, it was used in special education schools by teachers and professionals. To demonstrate experimental control with the multiple baseline design, the investigator must first collect baseline data simultaneously across three or more data series, such as: across behavior, across conditions or across individuals ( Tawney and Gast, 1984; Alberto and Troutman, 2000).

During the inservice training, a multiple baseline across behavior (Tawney and Gast, 1984) was employed in one case. The decision for that choice was related to the fact   that this particular classroom teacher had two non-verbal students with other associated handicapping conditions. The main concern of this classroom teacher, was to investigate how she could teach these students to communicate their needs. These two students had same and different needs. However, both of them needed to communicate their needs in every situation. Therefore, it was decided that, in order for this study to assess the effects of an alternative communication program with these students, it would be better to apply a multiple baseline across behaviors which would make it possible to address specific behaviors for each individual. For both subjects, a commucation board was designed to teach them to communicate what they needed to be able to perform their daily living activities. They were also taught another activity.   For one subject, the communication board was designed to teach the tools he needed in the workshop. For the other subject, a communication board was designed to teach him to choose the activities he would like to perform throughout the day. The design seemed to be very appropriate for teaching how to communicate using a communication board, since it was possible to attend specific individual needs and evaluate the design efficacy as well.

Multiple Baseline Across Subjects

According to Figure 1, all other studies (14) employed multiple baseline across subjects. As seen in Figure 1, the majority of studies were developed by physical education and classroom teachers.   The choice to employ these designs in all   of these studies, is related to the fact that all these teachers (5 physical education and 7 classroom teachers) and the two social workers wanted to investigate the implementation of programs to teach their students skills they needed most. Since the studies were conducted by the teachers and professionals with their own students, finding subjects to participate in the study was not a problem. In many cases, the teachers applied the independent   variable with all the students in the classroom, but collected the data of only those chosen to be the target students.   There was a great variety of interventions. For example, the physical education teachers (two) investigated how to increase social skills during physical education; one investigated how to reduce aggressive behaviors during physical education classes; two investigated   how to teach the basic skills for olympic gymnastics and basketball. Other studies investigated volunteer preparation to help in special education: siblings, high school students, elders, adolescents. Other studies had different concerns, such as: functional language, ICS model (Individual Curriculum Sequence), professionalization, psychomotricity. This variety of topics, participant ages, levels of impairment, and students’ specific needs, justified the application of a multiple baseline across subjects. According to Tawney and Gast (1984), this kind of design is used when: (a) there are a reasonable amount of students with the same characteristics who need to learn the same skills; (b) with students who learn at a different pace and are not always   ready to learn the same skill when the other students are; (c) teacher’s and other professional’s interest in identifying efficient intervention strategies to teach their students a wide variety of skills.

Implications of this investigation for the field of special education in Brasil

This research shows the outcomes of an inservice training teacher’s preparation over many years. The main objective of this research was to desmystify, among special education teachers and other professionals, the difficulties   they believed they would face when conducting research. So, helping them to conduct their studies with their own students made them learn that they could conduct research during their daily activities in special education settings.   By doing so, they could contribute to the special education literature in Brazil by demonstrating to other teachers and professionals many ways to intervene with children with special needs. The study, not only prepared teachers and professionals to act as researchers in the field of special education, but also provided a high quality education for individuals with special needs that was markedly important to the lives of this population. For example, the mentally retarded adolescents who learned how to change baby’s diapers, were hired within the institution as employees to work as teacher aides in the infant classrooms; the students who were taught the basics of basketball and olympic gymnastics became special athletes and represented their schools in many special olympic games; the siblings especially trained to teach their mentally retarded sisters daily living skills, later on helped the school social worker to organize the school “sibling club” in which other brothers and sisters were trained to help their own special sibling; the elders, by being trained to act as volunteers in special schools filled their spare time and reported feeling fulfilled and helpful in being able to able to help persons with special needs; the use of communication boards made classroom teachers learn that they could teach their non-verbal students to communicate their needs with low cost teacher made materials.

Analysing all these studies, this research points out that single subject reseach designs should be used by teachers in daily special education practices with their own students as is indicated by Tawney and Gast (1984). However, the study goes further in showing that these designs can also be applied by other professionals as well, such as psychologists and social workers. Thus, the realization of these studies with many different teachers and professionals demonstrated that there are no barriers to investigating the day to day activities offered by special education services.

             It can be concluded that, even though single subject research methodology had been minimally used in the field of special education in Brasil in the production of theses and dissertations, the data derived from this research demonstrated that it can be a very promising research methodology in this field.

References

Alberto, P. A. e Troutman, A. C. (1982) Applied behavior analysis for teachers: Influencing student performance. Columbus: Charles E. Merril Publishing Company

Alberto, P.A & Troutman, A (2000). Applied Behavior Analysis for Teachers. Columbus (OH): Charles E. Merril.

Almeida, M. A. (2004). Metodologia de Delineamentos de pesquisa experimental intra-sujeitos: Relato de alguns estudos conduzidos no Brasil. IN: M. C Marquesine, M. A Almeida & s. Omote (Eds.) Colóquios sobre Pesquisa em Educação Especial (pp.63-99), Londrina: Eduel.

Baer, D. Wolf, M.M. & Risley, T. R. (1968). Some current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analyis, 1969, 1 (1), 91-97.

Barlow, D. H. & Hersen, M. (1973). Single case experimental designs: Uses in applied clinical research. Archives of General Psychiatry, 29, 319-325.

Birnbrauer, J. S , Peterson, C. R. & Solnick, J. V. (1974). Design and Iterpretarion of Sudies of Single Subjcts. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 79, 191-203.

Campbell, d. T & Stanley, J. C. (1966). Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Glass, G. V., Wilson, V. L.   & Gottman, J. M. (1975). Design and Analysis of Time Series Experiments. Boulder (CO): Associated University Press.

Hartman, D. P & Hall, R. V. (1976). The changing Criterion Design. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 9 (4), 527- 532.

Hersen, M. & Barlow, D. H. (1976). Single Case Experimental Designs: Strategies for Studying Behavior Change. New York: Pergamon Press.

Kazdin, A E (1981). External validity and single-case experimentation: Issues and limitations (a response to J. S. Birnbrauer). Analysis and Intervention in Developmental disabilities, 1, 133-143.

Kratochwill, T. R. (1978)..Single Subject   Research for evaluating Changes. New York: Academic Press.

Hartman, D. P & Hall, R. V. (1976). The changing Criterion Design. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 9 (4), 527- 532.

Nunes, F., & Nunes, L. (1987). Metodologia de Pesquisa em Educação Especial: Delineamento de pesquisa de sujeito como seu próprio controle. Tecnologia Educacional, 16, 78-79.

Nunes, L. R. P.; Glat, R.; Ferreira, J. R.; Mendes, E. G. (1998). Pesquisa em Educação Especial na pós-graduação. Vol. 3, Rio de Janeiro: Sete Letras.

Nunes, L. , Ferreira, J. R., Glat, R. & Mendes, E. (2001). Relatório Final do PRODISC. Rio de Janeiro: Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro.

Tawney, J. W. & Gast, D. (1984). Single Subject Research in Special Education. Columbus (OH): Charles E. Merril.

McReynolds, L. V. % Kearns, K. P. (1983). Single subject experimental designs in communicative disorders. Baltimore: University Park Press.

Richards, S. B., Taylor, R. L., Ramasamy, R. & Richards, R. (1999). Single Subject Research – Applications in Educational and Clinical Settings. San Diego: Singular Publishing Group, Inc.

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