Implementing Pivotal Response Treatment to Teach Question Asking to High School Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The purpose of this study was to test the use of Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) in the secondary school setting. There were two main goals: (a) to evaluate secondary education providers' ability to implement PRT with fidelity following a PRT training program; and (b) to evaluate the effects of school-implemented PRT on the social communication skills of adolescents and young adults with ASD, specifically, question-asking behavior. This concurrent multiple baseline design study across dyads investigated the use of PRT in the secondary school setting with adolescents with ASD. Specifically, it examined the impact of PRT on question-asking behavior. Education providers (n = 3) were trained to implement PRT with a secondary student with ASD. All education providers improved in their ability to use PRT strategies, though struggled with fidelity. Two students exhibited clear effects with noteworthy improvement in their use of targeted question initiations. For targeted question initiations, the weighted value for the Tau-U phase contrast between aggregated baseline and intervention phases was 0.80 and statistically significant (p < .0001). PRT is a promising approach to increasing question-asking behavior in secondary students with ASD when implemented by a trained education provider. Continued research should be a matter of priority in order to expand social skills instruction for adolescents with ASD with the hope of ultimately making a positive difference in adult outcomes.

Initial validation of the Classroom Management Observation Tool (CMOT).

Effective classroom management is critical for student and teacher success. Because teachers receive limited preservice preparation and in-service support in classroom management, educational leaders (e.g., school psychologists, behavior coaches, mentor teachers, and administrators) need efficient and effective tools to identify teachers' strengths and needs and to guide professional development. Current approaches to assess teachers' classroom management are either (a) simple and efficient, but have unknown psychometric properties, or (b) psychometrically sound, but resource intensive. Thus, a Classroom Management Observation Tool (CMOT) that is simple, efficient, and has promising psychometric properties would fill a critical need in the field. This article describes the initial development and validation of the CMOT-a four-item rating of teachers' active supervision, opportunities to respond, specific praise, and positive to corrective ratio-and presents promising evidence of content validity, factor structure, interrater reliability, construct validity, and generalizability. Further research is needed to develop this tool for screening, progress monitoring, and other assessment purposes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).