Date of Award

Fall 2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Human Movement Sciences

Program/Concentration

Special Education

Committee Director

Jonna L. Bobzien

Committee Member

Laura C. Chezan

Committee Member

Annemarie L. Horn

Committee Member

Marcia L. Rock

Abstract

The growing shortage of special education teachers (SETs) and declining retention rates across numerous United States (U.S.) school districts pose a serious threat to the quality of education provided to students with disabilities. One of the ongoing challenges is the significant gap between evidence-based practices (EBPs) and their actual implementation in classrooms. Researchers emphasize the importance of providing high-quality professional development (PD) targeting the use of EBPs in the classroom, as doing so has been linked to SET retention (Berry & Gravelle, 2013; Berry et al., 2011; Hagaman & Casey, 2018; Reagan et al., 2019). This study aimed to experimentally assess the effectiveness of eCoaching through online Bug-in-Ear (BIE) technology in improving SETs’ implementation fidelity of discrete trial training (DTT) when working with elementary-age students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).Further, the researcher examined whether SETs consistently maintained DTT implementation fidelity over time and whether they were able to generalize the use of DTT by applying it to other subject areas. A single-subject concurrent multiple-baseline research design, replicated across three SET participants, was used. The results indicated that all three participants significantly improved their use of DTT steps with fidelity while teaching academic skills to students with ASD. Furthermore, eCoaching with online BIE technology enabled SETs to maintain and generalize the DTT steps over time and across different academic subject areas. Finally, limitations and implications for future research and practice are discussed.

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In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/89n9-xd38

ISBN

9798302862075

ORCID

0000-0002-3251-0502

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