Designing and implementing safety skills teaching programto individuals with developmental disabilities

This study was designed to develop a safety-skills teaching program for parents and teachers to use to teach safety skills to their children and students with developmental disabilities. In order to meet these aims two studies were conducted subsequently. Study I was designed to develop Safety Skills Teaching Program for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities (GÜBEP) and Study II was designed to examine the effects of GUBEP on parents' and teachers' safety skills teaching behaviors as well as the effects of safety skills instruction on the acquisition of targeted safety skills in participating children. The researcher used problem-centered living condition design in Study I while developing GUBEP. During the Study I, the researcher took consumers' and experts' (i.e., teachers and higher education faculties) opinions about the program. Five participants participated from each group. At the end of the study, a safety skills teaching program named as GUBEP including 173 safety skills from seven different safety skills teaching areas was developed. For Study II, was completed with four adult-child dyads. During the Study II the A-B design was used to investigate the aforementioned effects of the GUBEP intervention. The GUBEP intervention was conducted until the participating adults utilize the steps of the safety skills instruction assigned to them with 100% accuracy and their children acquired the targeted safety skills to a certain extent. The findings showed that GUBEP is effective in training parents and teachers to utilize safety skills instruction and in teaching targeted safety skills to children with developmental disabilities. Last but not the least, the opinions of the parents and teachers about GUBEP were positive in general. Based on the findings, the researchers developed suggestions for implications and future research. Keywords: Adult training, Curriculum design, Developmental disabilities, Safety skills, Systematic instruction,