The effects of preservice teachers generated and delivered social stories on the acquistion of social skills of children with autism spectrum disorders

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) need effective interventions in order to acquire social skills because of the features of the spectrum. Social stories are one of the evidence based interventions which are known effective on supporting the behavioral and educational needs of children with ASD. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of social story intervention delivered by preservice teachers on teaching social skills to preschoolers with ASD. Maintance and generalization effects of social story intervention were investigated in this study as well. Furthermore, social validity of the study was also assessed by asking ideas about the social story intervention of preservice teachers and parents of child with ASD. The research was carried out at Anadolu University Research Institute for Individuals with Disabilities in Developmental Support Unit with three children with ASD attending the unit for the group instruction and three preservice teachers teaching at the Unit. First of the research aim is investigate whether the preservice teacher had acquired social story intervention or usage and general knowledge's about this intervention. The other aim of this research is examination of effects of preservice teachers generated and delivered social stories on the acquistion of social skills of children with ASD, and also generalization and maintance of those skills in one, three and five weeks period after the research. Preservice teachers were provided with a training procedure to gain the skills of writing and presenting social stories by researcher. For evaluation of the social validity data of the research, one of the qualitative research method, content analysis has been used. The effectiveness of social story intervention was evaluated by using one of the single subject methods, multiple probe across participants design. Social validity data was gathered via subjective evaluation approach from parents of child with ASD and preservice teachers. Results indicated that preservice teachers acquired the skills of writing the social stories in 100% accuracy and could apply them with high level of implementation fidelity. Besides, children with ASD 100% acquired the target social skills and have maintained them for one, three and five weeks after the study finished and could have generalized the target social skills for different environments and people. Social validity results show that preservice teachers' and parents' of child with ASD have positive ideas about the study. Results of the study should be supported with other studies, and the use of social story interventions by teachers and preservice teachers should be extend the by using during in-service and preservice periods.