Assessment and Training of Teacher Interviewing Skills to Program Common Stimuli Between Special- and General-Education Environments

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Abstract
The focus of this research was on teaching one generalization strategy, programming common stimuli, to special-education teachers so they could systematically gather information from general educators and use it to program for generalization. To assess the impact of training, a modified multiple-baseline design was employed to demonstrate a functional relationship between the independent variable, training, and the primary dependent variable, percent of common-stimuli information gathered in interviews with regular-classroom teachers. Subjects were five special-education teachers, four of whom participated in a counterbalanced order of training about gathering different types of common-stimuli information. These four interviewed 12 to 15 teachers across baseline, two training, and follow-up phases. The fifth subject served as a control in an attempt to assess the extent to which training contributed to behavior change as opposed to the Common Stimuli Form alone. Results indicated that training increased the percent of common-stimuli information teachers gathered and that order of training may be important when response generalization and maintenance are considered. Training that explains the concepts of generalization and maintenance is necessary in that use of a common-stimuli interview form alone has attenuated utility.