An investigation of instructional scheduling arrangements for community-based instruction.
Schedule simulated and community vocational lessons on the same school day for teens with moderate ID to speed up learning and keep the skill.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested three ways to schedule vocational lessons for high-schoolers with moderate intellectual disability. One group practiced in a classroom simulation on Monday and the same skill in a real store on Tuesday. A second group got only classroom practice. The third group did both on the same day: simulation in the morning, community trip right after lunch.
They used an alternating-treatments design. Each student rotated through the three schedules. The skill was grocery bagging. The teachers counted how many correct steps each teen did and how well the skill lasted one week later.
What they found
Same-day combined instruction won. Teens learned the steps faster and still did them well a week later. Split-day and classroom-only took more trials and the skill faded sooner.
Generalization scores were highest when simulation and community practice happened within the same school day.
How this fits with other research
Meuret et al. (2001) saw that students with mild ID gained more from simulation than those with moderate ID. O'Reilly et al. (2004) now show that putting both lessons on the same day erases that gap for the moderate group.
Callahan et al. (2010) used computer video instead of live simulation and also found quick gains for food-prep skills. Both studies say the same thing: pack simulation close to real practice, no matter the medium.
Older work like Rutter et al. (1987) taught vocational skills inside the classroom only. The new data say leaving the room the same day is worth the bus ride.
Why it matters
If you run community-based instruction, stop splitting lessons across two days. Run your simulation right before the community trip. You will need fewer trials and get stronger generalization. One bus ride and one extra hour of planning can save weeks of re-teaching.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The instructional scheduling arrangements of simulated and community-based instruction across an equivalent set of functional and vocational skills were examined. Five secondary age students with moderate intellectual disabilities participated in four instructional scheduling arrangements measuring skill acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of functional tasks. The four instructional scheduling arrangements examined were simulated-only instruction (SOI), community-based instruction only (CBI), combination of SOI and CBI on consecutive school days (CCD), and combination of SOI and CBI on the same school day (CSD). The CSD schedule was significantly more effective for student acquisition performance than SOI, CBI, and CCD schedules. Although the CBI schedule resulted in the fewest number of instructional sessions for students to acquire the targeted skill, fewer sessions for skill generalization were required for students during the combined simulation and community instruction CSD schedule. Overall, both combined instructional scheduling arrangements (e.g., CCD, CSD) produced more efficient outcomes for generalization than SOI and CBI scheduling arrangements.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2004 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2003.04.006