In the field of visual disabilities, students who have visual impairments in addition to other disabilities receive limited amounts of direct service time from a teacher of students who are visually impaired (TVI), leaving most of their education in the hands of special education teachers and paraprofessionals. These professionals can support…

Through a social constructivist lens, this study looked at how paraprofessionals understand mathematics instructional content and associated pedagogical skills and explore an organization's current involvement of support staff in schools' mathematical classrooms. The setting for this bounded case study was two elementary schools contained in one…

The need for more paraprofessionals is growing due to the increasing number of students who are qualifying for specialized educational support. In addition, paraprofessionals have been called upon to provide support in the general education setting in schools. This research study was designed to determine the impact of online paraprofessional…

Paraeducators play a marginal yet essential role in fulfilling teaching-related tasks in many international classrooms in China. In order to meet high standards of education, schools often provide professional training to paraeducators. However, in the training process, schools primarily focus on their own needs and rarely consider the personal…

Effective classroom management is critical to supporting student learning and success in school. However, little research has focused specifically on the impact of classroom management on student mathematics achievement, especially in the early elementary grades or in a small group (i.e., Tier 2) context. To address this need we investigated the…

The purpose of this instrumental case study was to observe music educators and special education paraprofessionals (SEPs) in a learning community that examined their perceptions and necessary practices needed to teach music to students with disabilities. The primary question of this study was: How may a community of practice (CoP) offer…

Paraprofessionals are often tasked with providing instruction to students with severe disabilities despite little or no training in evidence-based practices. Previous studies have demonstrated that specific strategies (i.e., didactic instruction, modeling, and immediate performance feedback) in a 1-to-1 format can enable paraprofessionals to…

This article reports on a small-scale study which explored the perceptions of learning support assistants (LSAs) about how they facilitate learner agency and wellbeing, two key facets of the capability approach. Interviews were conducted with ten LSAs working in an international school to investigate whether LSAs support aspects of this…

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…

The purpose of this dissertation was two-fold: 1) to examine the teaching practices of paraprofessionals or teachers who have had ABA training and those who have not, and 2) to examine the differences in teaching practices between professionally trained RBTs and paraprofessionals or teachers who have had no ABA training. A case study was performed…

Teaching students with intellectual and development disabilities (IDD) can often be a difficult and complex job. Teachers frequently rely on educational support staff or paraprofessionals to assist in the classroom in a variety of ways. However, paraprofessionals are unlikely to come into the classroom with the knowledge and skills needed to…

The purpose of this research was to examine the pedagogical practices that encourage students with severe disabilities' participation in an elementary physical education program through the lens of ableism. Focus group interviews were conducted with elementary students and semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight educators in the…

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to summarize single-case design studies in which paraprofessionals delivered interventions to students with autism spectrum disorder in school settings. We descriptively analyzed participant and intervention characteristics and study quality and estimated intervention effect using Tau-U across student…

Job coaches are not typically trained to implement systematic instructional strategies to teach vocational skills to students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). This study replicated and expanded the evaluation of a job coach behavioral skills training program designed by Brock et al. (2016) to teach participants to implement…

Colorado has a significant shortage of special education teachers, particularly within rural areas. This article will compare two grant-funded recruitment and training projects drawing connections from the current research base in training and retention. High-Leverage Practices were infused into these projects to support authentic assistive…