Professional development: The effects on teaching behaviors of middle school teachers and academic outcomes of their students with developmental disabilities

This study aimed to investigate the effects of a professional development package on middle school Turkish Language Teachers' accurate use of steps of simultaneous prompting procedure with self-monitoring and the effects of the simultaneous prompting procedure on students' outcomes. Moreover, both opinions of the teachers and students were examined in the study. Three middle school teachers (Turkish Language Teachers) and their students with developmental disabilities participated in the study. Teacher-student dyads were formed and the study designed with a nested multiple probe design across dyads conducted. After baseline sessions, the researchers conducted a face to face training session consisting professional development package to each teacher individually. Following these sessions, the researchers administered the instructional sessions with each teacher in a time-lagged fashion. The teachers used simultaneous prompting to teach target academic skills to their students with developmental disabilities while routine lessons in their inclusive classrooms and self-monitoring at the end of the lessons. The teachers and researchers determined target skills of the students considering the curriculum and the students' individualized education program. Results showed that the teachers acquired the ability the use simultaneous prompting procedure and self-monitoring, maintained the acquired skills over time and generalized them to teach new academic skills to their students. Besides, results also showed that the students acquired the targeted academic content, maintained it over time, and generalized it across different people. Last, both the opinions of the teachers and the students about social validity of the study were positive.