There are many barriers to collaborative planning between music educators and special education paraprofessionals (SEPs). While allocated collaborative planning time would be best, the reality for many music educators and SEPs is that they are not given this time. I provide three alternatives to collaborative planning that were suggested by music…

Paraprofessionals play a significant role in the education system. However, they often need more training on specific instructional strategies to use with the students they work with. In this study, we trained two paraprofessionals working in a self-contained U.S. elementary classroom for students with high-intensity behavioral support needs. Each…

Special education teachers are often responsible for training their staff how to support children with autism spectrum disorder in their classrooms. In addition to academic and behavioral interventions, paraeducators also need to be prepared to support students with complex communication needs. This study was designed to investigate the effects of…

Introduction: Educators in public schools are required to serve students in their least restrictive environment. While many evidence-based practices (EBPs), defined as practices and strategies shown by research to have meaningful effects on outcomes for autistic students are documented in the literature, less is known about EBP use among educators…

Coaching with live observation and immediate performance feedback is an effective means to train paraprofessionals, but might not always be feasible. We used a multiple baseline across participants design with six paraprofessionals who taught elementary students with severe disabilities to test the efficacy of two innovations designed to improve…

Coaching with live observation and immediate performance feedback is an effective means to train paraprofessionals, but might not always be feasible. We used a multiple baseline across participants design with six paraprofessionals who taught elementary students with severe disabilities to test the efficacy of two innovations designed to improve…

This study examined the effects of teacher aides on students' academic achievement, addressing: whether the presence of a full-time aide in K-3 classrooms would affect student achievement; whether the presence of an aide in the primary grades would affect students' later academic achievement (grades 4, 6, and 8); and whether the nature of aide…

The current UK agenda for modernization of schools places great emphasis on the reconsideration of the roles and boundaries of teaching and support staff. Internationally there is a significant move towards the inclusion of all children within a mainstream setting as an undeniable right. This carries great implications for staff in mainstream…

Stimulus control is evident when a specific antecedent object or event (discriminative stimulus) increases the probability that a specific behavior will occur. A behavioral intervention is described whereby a teacher's stimulus control was successfully generalized to a paraprofessional playground aide. The generalization procedure increased the…

Describes an innovative incentive system to cut down on student noise in the school cafeteria during lunch periods. (AN)

The use of a trained paraprofessional in a response reduction procedure with a self-stimulating severely/multiply disabled 12 year old resulted in a decrease in self-stimulation and an increase in socially relevant behavior. (CL)

This paper considers how the services of paraprofessionals might be used in teaching and learning situations, especially reading instruction. The paper points out that teachers need to observe each child and notice if modifications need to be made in teaching reading, a situation that becomes quite difficult for the regular teacher to determine…

In January 2000, the Scottish Council for Research in Education began a 2-year evaluation of the Classroom Assistant Initiative, which provided funding for hiring up to 5,000 new classroom assistants in Scottish elementary schools by 2002. The evaluation examined: relationships between student achievement and use of classroom assistants, comparing…

Recently, one southeastern Idaho school's special-education aides were upgraded to paraprofessional status. All 28 para-educators are women, have at least a high-school diploma, and have job descriptions specifying what they should know and accomplish in the classroom. Training and compensation particulars are discussed. (MLH)