As an instructor, it is important to recognize the vital relationship between direct student instruction and visual supports. Visual supports such as video modeling, graphic organizers, and picture cue cards are an essential part of instruction, but they must be used in concert with careful direct instruction. These visual elements and technologies do not operate in a vacuum, nor can they be implemented in a perfectly linear sequence. They must be introduced in the context of an instructional plan that will support their use.
The behavioral principles that underlie direct instruction should be applied when the instructor first introduces an element of visual support. For example, when an instructor presents a visual schedule, does the student automatically refer to and follow that schedule across all conditions? In nearly all cases, no is the answer. Rather, the instructor directly (explicitly) teaches the student how to use the schedule through modeling and practice. Within each practice opportunity, the instructor shapes and reinforces responses, gradually fades prompts, and systematically targets use of that schedule across increasingly generalized conditions. Thus, each technology depends on the other to effectively target the development and generalization of skills:
- Determine the student’s motivation level, assuring that tasks and break activities are engaging and interesting.
- Design the environment to support attention, stamina, and independence.
- Provide visual supports to help the student focus on sequence and key concepts in the tasks.
In this way, you begin the blended approach to teaching the targeted skills. It is important to remember that this is a bi-directional process! It is very likely you will continue during instruction to modify elements of environmental design and visual supports to better meet the learning style of the student. Likewise, to best promote eventual independence, it is absolutely necessary to continually modify these supports throughout instruction to make them as user-operated and non-prompt-dependent as possible.
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Provide initial instruction in a well-engineered setting. Complex work skills, including those that hinge on social communication, should be first introduced in a highly structured class setting. Certainly, interviewing skills should be practiced first in a safe environment before setting up the actual interview |
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Choose a limited number of target skills at a level which can be moved to an 80 % success rate quickly. |
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Capitalize on the student’s motivation, and recognize that it can shift from moment to moment. Whenever possible, integrate the individual’s interests and strengths into instructional activities and visual supports. |
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The priming process draws on the idea that the individual must be motivated in order to acquire a new skill or response. Priming is required to counter a student’s resistance to change and learning new things. The individual may be anxious or not understand:
Priming requires the educator to get agreement with the individual that there is a need to learn a new behavior. In this way, priming procedures and efforts to promote the student’s capacity for accurate self-assessment are inextricably linked. This process of getting agreement requires a functional assessment if there is resistance to learning in the student. Then it requires the use of a graphic organizer, a social narrative, a cartoon, or some other visual support to help the individual ‘agree’ to work on the new skill or behavior. Within priming, there is a second element that is important: Assuring sufficient reinforcement for the practice and use of the new target skill or behavior. |
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Once a target is selected that is within the capacity of the student, and the student is agreeable to the work, the instructor may choose to provide systematic practice of the skill using a process of modeling and gradual release through role play. The gradual release sequence requires initial modeling (I do-you watch), followed by repeated practice with fading of supports: I do-you help, you do-I help, and you do- I watch. |
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Initially, the targeted skill may not sufficiently approximate the desired target behavior. However, once the student can perform a targeted approximation of the behavior multiple times, the instructor will then systematically use shaping so that the student moves toward performing it at a level expected in community integration. Frequent repetition and practice of these targeted skills is also important. |
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Prompting will be necessary, but careful selection of types of prompts that can be faded quickly to natural and visual cues within the environment is vital. Prompt dependency is a serious problem, and thus prompts should direct the student’s attention to visual cues and tools that will remain available to support the student in completing the task correctly. In the shaping and prompting of the target behavior, the teacher must assure that the student is initiating the response. It is crucial to fade personal prompts quickly to assure that initiation does not originate in the teacher. |
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Careful choice of individualized reinforcers to assure the student’s investment is also essential. |
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Once a skill is taught in one setting with one person, there is much work left to do. The process of generalization requires attention to several concepts. Generalization requires changing the people with whom the skill is practiced and changing the settings systematically to help the student remember to initiate the skill. Do you practice the skill of ‘asking for help during work activities’ with multiple supervisors, then in different environments, with different tasks? Do you add peers and co-workers to the setting? Do you expect the student to ask a peer for help when appropriate? Systematic generalization of a skill is essential to supporting the student in independently using the skill in future community environments. As noted, the use of the concept of interspersion is important. The instructor wants to present opportunities to practice the skill quite frequently at first and then systematically change settings, activities, materials, and people so that the student has lots of practice in recognizing when to use the skill and how to initiate it. |
Each Direct Instruction subsection offers detailed and practical information on how to apply these behavioral principles to meet the needs of your student.