Effectiveness of naturalistic teaching intervention presented with online coaching to parents of children with autism spectrum disorders

It is very important to start the education process of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder at an early stage. In this process, one of the most effective ways to reduce the effects of disability is the functional use of evidence-based practices. One of these practices used in the early education of children with ASD is parent-centered practices. While parent-centered practices were carried out only in the form of information sharing during the family trainings in the past, in the following years they have evolved into coaching practices that will support not only the knowledge level of parents but also their implementations. Parental coaching practices are used in teaching many different skills. One of these are naturalistic teaching methods that parents and children can apply and use in their natural environments. Coaching these skills to parents change the daily routine, activity and transition processes into a qualified level, and make easy previously learned skills to generalize in natural environments. While parent-coaching practices were previously presented face-to-face in early intervention services, they have started to be presented online (remote) systems with technological advances and developments. In this research, it was aimed to provide parents naturalistic teaching strategies by using online (remote) coaching practices, taking into account the recent extraordinary situations such as pandemics and earthquakes. Totally 16 participants consisting of children aged 0-6 with ASD and their parents were recruited in the study. Parents were randomly assigned to experiment I and experiment II groups according to the type of immediate and delayed (video) feedback. This research was designed according to embedded research design from mix method types, which provides the synthesis and comparison of quantitative and qualitative data, in order to determine the levels of parents learning and applying naturalistic teaching strategies and qualified adult behaviors during the online coaching process, which is presented according to the type of immediate and delayed feedback. The quantitative paradigm of the research was created with a pre-test-post-test static (effect) group quasi-experimental design, and the data obtained were analyzed with the Mann-Whitney U Test for the difference between the groups, and the within-group differences were revealed with the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. Qualitative data collected before, during and after the research were analyzed with thematic analysis. The findings of the research showed that the Naturalistic Teaching Intervention applied with online coaching showed significant improvements in the quality adult behavior levels of the parents who received both immediate and delayed (video) feedback, and an increase in the frequency of using natural teaching strategies. In addition, it was found that there were significant improvements in the interactional behaviors of the children of the parents in both groups and a positive decrease in the autistic interaction levels. Besides, it was found that the qualitative data collected before, during and after the implementation of the study were in parallel with the increase in both the parents' qualified adult behaviors and the frequency of using naturalistic teaching strategies. Moreover, the parents' perspectives on the implementation process were examined in terms of social validity, and it was found that the parents expressed a positive opinion on the online coaching process. The findings obtained at the end of the research are listed as the level of qualified adult behaviors of the parents, the frequency of using naturalistic teaching strategies, the pivotal behaviors of the children and the autism interaction levels. From these findings, the frequency of parents' use of qualified adult behaviors and natural teaching strategies showed similarity with the literature by showing a low level before the implementation and an increase at the desired level after the implementation in the studies. In addition, the progress of children in pivotal behaviors is also similar to the findings in the relevant literature. Other findings were discussed in comparison with the studies conducted in the literature, and suggestions for future research were presented.