Emergency fire-safety skills for blind children and adolescents. Group training and generalization.

Eight blind teens lived in a residential school. Staff ran group lessons on what to do if the fire alarm rings.

The class used behavioral skills training. First the teacher modeled the steps. Then students rehearsed. Correct moves earned tokens.

Researchers tracked each teen’s steps during surprise fire drills. They started the training at different times to show the teaching caused the change.

All eight students learned the full escape sequence during practice. Six of them still did every step correctly during unannounced night alarms.

Skills held for the rest of the school year. No one needed extra one-to-one teaching.

Garcia et al. (2016) repeated the idea with preschoolers who have autism. Simple model-rehearse-praise also worked, showing the method spans ages and diagnoses.

Baruni et al. (2022) reviewed dozens of safety studies. They say training must move beyond table-top drills and test in real places. Mountjoy et al. (1984) already did that by running night drills in the actual dorm.

McMillan et al. (1997) found that without extra generalization tricks, hearing-impaired preschoolers only used new social skills in the training room. T et al. got generalization for most teens without added steps, probably because the night drill itself was the real setting.

You can run fire-safety lessons in a group. This saves staff time and still gives life-saving results. Use real alarms in real places to check if learning sticks. If you serve students with sensory impairments, add clear tactile or auditory cues during rehearsal. The same plan works for other safety skills—just swap the hazard and keep the BST frame.