Teaching Table Cleaning Skills to Secondary Students with Moderate/Severe Disabilities: Facilitating Observational Learning during Instructional Downtime

Abstract

This investigation taught table cleaning skills to 4 secondary students with moderate/'severe disabilities using a system of least prompts (SLP) procedure and multiple exemplars. The students also had the opportunity to acquire nontargeted information through observational learning during typical instructional downtime, in which the instructor intermittently praised them for watching and listening as he prepared and put away the necessary materials. A multiple probe design across students evaluated the effectiveness of the procedure, and pre- and post-intervention probe sessions evaluated the acquisition of nontargeted information and generalization. The results indicate that the SLP instructional strategy with multiple exemplars was effective in teaching table cleaning skills to the participants that generalized to three other settings. In addition, students increased the ability to perform tasks acquired observationally.