A comparison of natural and structured instruction in teaching social skills to students with autism spectrum disorder

In this research, whether the effectiveness and efficiency of teaching social skills using structured teaching and social skills teaching using natural teaching method differ in teaching social skills to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and the opinions of the subjects and their teachers participating in the study were examined. The research was conducted with two 7-year-old male subjects diagnosed with ASD. Adaptive alternating practices model, one of the single-subject research methods, was used to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of structured and natural teaching methods. The implementation process was divided into baseline, teaching, probe, monitoring and generalization sessions. The dependent variables of the study are self-introduction and permission asking skills. The independent variables of the research are structured teaching and natural teaching. The effectiveness data of the independent variables are presented visually through graphical analysis and in the form of effect size calculations. The efficiency and social validity data of the research were analyzed descriptively. The effectiveness findings of the study showed that both subjects with autism demonstrated the target skills at a level that met the criteria with both teaching practices. The effect size Tau-U value of the data obtained from both participants was calculated as 100%. In addition, it was observed that the subjects were able to generalize the skills they acquired to different environments and people and maintained them one, three, five weeks after the study ended. No difference was observed between structured and natural teaching practices in terms of maintenance and generalization. When structured and natural teaching were compared in terms of efficiency, it was seen that the application with structured teaching was more efficient in terms of the number of sessions, number of trials, number of errors and total teaching time until the targeted skills criteria were met in both subjects. In addition, in the social validity findings of the research, it was concluded that the subjects and teachers participating in the research expressed positive opinions about both teaching practices.