Association for Behavior Analysis International

Whether the focus is classroom management or academic instruction, the future of behavior analysis in education must examine classroom contingencies that prevail in American education, and how we can lead the way in producing generic repertoires in addition to our current effective procedures for teaching academic skills. In the first presentation, two teachers at Morningside Academy describe the direct effects of teaching organizational repertoires on middle school students materials consumption, as well as the generative effects on academic achievement, efficiency, and engagement. In the second presentation, two teachers examine math achievement scores to describe the additional effects of teaching students to write their own problems, on teaching how to solve given word problems. In the third presentation, Haugland Learning Center extends Morningsides Generative Instruction to teaching middle and high school students on the Autism Spectrum, and begins to answer the question of how much generativity is possible with ASD learners. The last presentation describes a recent book about Precision Teaching and its contributions to the wave of Response to Intervention systems being implemented in schools across America, an example of behavior analysis hitching a ride with more mainstream practices in typical and special education. Elizabeth Street will summarize and critique.

At Morningside Academy, teachers utilize many performance pinpoints to measure student progress toward mastery. Most commonly we use see problem/write answer to measure skills ranging from basic math fact tools through more complex computation and conceptual skills. The Morningside Word Problems program teaches students how to analyze math word problems by problem class or type. Students build rate of see problem/write answer on the problems presented in the program, but is there is another way to demonstrate understanding of word problems? To find out, we will assess the underlining component skills required to be successful in Morningside Word Problems. Using the program as a jumping-off point, we have created a series of curriculum-based assessments (CBAs) measuring students skills in generating their own word problems using their knowledge of number families and word problem structure. We will compare student progress in writing their own word problems on our newly developed CBAs to data gathered on the standardized Fuchs, Hamlett, & Fuchs math curriculum-based assessment of word problem completion. Attached is a Standard Celeration Chart representative of many of our charts that demonstrate the effectiveness of problem solving on standardized progress monitoring instruments.

Beginning in 2010, Haugland Learning Center and Morningside Academy have been working to answer the question of whether students on the Autism spectrum could demonstrate generativity through contingency adduction. This process marks the first attempted implementation of the Morningside Model of Generative Instruction with a student population in which every student is on the Autism spectrum. After nearly 4 years of collaboration, the answer to our question is, increasingly, yes. This session will focus on (1) how the elements of the Morningside Model have been systematically installed to yield positive teacher and learner outcomes (2) how the program administrators and coaches have buttressed the Morningside Model to further support ASD learners and (3) how the training and coaching model has developed passionate teachers and analysts. Performance data will demonstrate the growth exhibited by students, teachers and coaches, and will frame the question of how we continue to develop and implement technologies that result in more dynamic learning outcomes. Attached is a representative Standard Celeration Chart showing ASD students academic progress using Morningsides Generative Instruction.

Based on their recent book entitled Response to Intervention and Precision Teaching: Creating Synergy in the Classroom, the presenters briefly describe the history and critical characteristics of the Response to Intervention (RTI) framework and of the Precision Teaching technology. They then recommend a marriage between these two approaches, each of which has provided impressive empirical evidence of its success in improving classroom performance. The authors also focus on the ways in which the power of Precision Teaching is enhanced by peer tutoring and provide an outline of the roles of the student and teacher in the peer tutoring model. Next, they suggest the tool and component skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic that, when fluent, predict better performance in higher level skills. Last, they discuss how Precision Teaching can facilitate performance in the content areas and explain how it establishes learners who are capable of engaging successfully in project-based learning.