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Kimber Malmgren

March 2006

Almost half of all school-age children receiving special education services are served in general education settings for most of the school day. But students with behavioral disabilities (BD) have difficulty with interpersonal relationships and social adjustment. That makes the movement toward inclusive settings more difficult.

The emotional and behavioral qualities associated with this disability demand that educators attend to the social and emotional needs of this population to increase their chances of success in all settings.

Students with BD are often included in general education classrooms with one-on-one support from a paraprofessional. But the presence of a paraprofessional can present both a physical and a symbolic barrier that interferes with students’ peer relationships. As more paraprofessional are hired to support students with disabilities in classrooms, it’s important to provide them with training and tools to successfully support students with BD in inclusive settings.

UW-Madison education professor Kimber Malmgren evaluated a training program designed to increase the number of facilitative behaviors displayed by paraprofessionals assigned to provide one-on-one assistance to individual students with BD. Facilitative behaviors are intended to encourage students to interact with others in the classroom.

Malmgren’s research questions were: Does participation in a one-on-one training for paraprofessionals result in an increased rate of facilitative behaviors displayed by those paraprofessionals? And, does this training increase rates of peer interaction for the students whom those paraprofessionals support?

This study involved 3 student-paraprofessional pairs in 2 elementary schools in a mid-sized, Midwestern school district. They were in a kindergarten classroom, a grade 3 classroom, and a grade 5 classroom. The intervention consisted of a 3-hour, individual paraprofessional training conducted by Malmgren’s colleague Julie N. Causton-Theoharis. It consisted of four activities aimed at enhancing perspective, establishing the importance of interaction, and increasing the paraprofessionals’ knowledge of strategies for facilitating peer interaction in the classroom.

The trainer prompted the paraprofessional to describe strategies or situations that would fall into four broad categories of facilitative behavior:

1. Teaching or modeling interaction skills
2. Highlighting similarities between students or strengths of the target students
3. Interpreting peer behaviors for the target student or a peer; and
4. Moving students together to work in close physical proximity to one another.

Other strategies discussed included “fading” assistance over time, and reducing paraprofessional proximity to the target student. They could be used in combination with strategies from any of the above four categories.

After the intervention, rates of facilitative behavior increased markedly for one paraprofessional, but only slightly for the other two. Overall, 55% of the facilitative behaviors observed were considered successful, resulting in an interaction for the target student. Rates of peer interaction were recorded as the number of observed interactions per minute. Rates of peer interaction increased for all three student participants.

At the same time, rates of paraprofessional facilitative behavior increased only slightly with the increases observed in rates of peer interaction. The majority of interactions observed for the target students following the intervention were noted to be “spontaneous,” i.e., not immediately preceded by an adult-initiated facilitative behavior.

However there was evidence that the strategies covered in the training intervention did have an effect. For example, embedded in the four facilitative behavior strategies was the idea that paraprofessionals should fade their assistance once it is given. Conscious attention to the need to fade individual support as a way of serving students more effectively resulted in all three paraprofessionals actually spending more time farther away from their assigned students. The time that each paraprofessional spent within arm’s reach of the target students decreased for all three paraprofessionals following the intervention.

In terms of the facilitative behaviors that were observed post-intervention, the paraprofessionals employed “teaching or modeling skills” most often. This is likely because the strategy encompassed the widest rage of behaviors, and because the behaviors that fall into this category are familiar to the paraprofessionals.

Comments from the paraprofessionals and teachers provided additional evidence of the intervention’s success and value. For example, one paraprofessional, Ms. Taylor, noted that she had never thought of herself as a “bridge” for interactions and that she may have unintentionally blocked student without knowing that these interactions might be desirable. She also commented that she now recognized the educational value in providing her student with more physical space and time to independently interact with peers. The general education teachers who worked directly with another paraprofessional, Mr. Aron, commented that she noticed a difference in the way Mr. Aron interacted with his student after the intervention. This teacher also commented that she thought a similar training could be beneficial to all professionals working with students with BD.

Malmgren says future research in this area should focus on the feasibility of large-scale implementation of this kind of training and on the relative utility of the specific facilitative skills covered by the intervention.