The efficiency of direct instruction method in teaching concepts of action to children with autism spectrum disorder

When concept teaching progresses within a certain system, its results are revealed quite successfully. One of the evidence-based teaching methods used in the teaching of concepts and skills in the field of special education is the Direct Instructional Model (DIM). İn the research, fort he phase of identifying the action declaring concepts that will be taught, it was taken care of that the concepts were from participant's daily and school life. Fort his purpose, concepts were chosen from the suggestions of the teachers whose students were participants at the research. The action declaring concepts that will be taught were determined as ''I stretched it'', ''I put on''and ''I pulled up''. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness and permanence of the direct instructional model used in the teaching of the concepts that express action in students with ASD. Another aim of the research is to examine the contribution of the Direct Instructional Model used to generalization. In addition, this study aimed to control the social validity of the instruction prepared according to the Direct Instructional Model. The dependent variable of the study is the level of acquisition of the concepts that express action through the direct instructional model of the participants. The independent variable of the research is the curriculum based on direct instructional method in teaching the concepts that express action in students with ASD. Two male and one female students diagnosed with ASD participated in this study, which was conducted using the inter-behavioral multiple probe model, which is one of the single-subject experimental designs. Based on the findings of the study, it was determined that the curriculum based on DIM was effective in terms of acquisition of action-indicating concepts of students with ASD as well as maintaining and generalizing these skills in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd weeks after the end of the education. It has also been concluded that the method is socially valid. The findings showed that the direct instructional model is an effective and valid method that can be used in the education of individuals diagnosed with ASD. It can be considered that the effectiveness of the method can be evaluated with further studies. Key Words: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Direct Instruction Model, Concept, Concept Teaching