The Effect of a Teacher Report on the Sustainability of an Intervention to Facilitate Engagement by a Child with Developmental Delays

This case study reports the effect of teachers completing and posting an Engagement Report on maintaining their use of a behavioral intervention designed to facilitate the engagement of a pre-school child with developmental delays. The Engagement Report recorded instances of child engagement during the day. Teachers posted the Report where the parent could read it when picking up her child. After establishing a baseline estimate of the efficacy of the Engagement Report (Condition B), a withdrawal-reversal phase (Condition A) was implemented under naturalistic conditions designed to simulate the absence of the researcher from the setting. Results indicated that teacher’s use of the behavioral intervention to facilitate child engagement was higher during the Report condition (B) compared to the No Report condition (A). The facilitation intervention plus the Engagement Report was turned over to the teachers upon completion of the experiment. Unobtrusive observation confirmed sustained use of both components after departure of the researcher at follow up. The results suggest two strategies that may help bridge the gap between research and practice. First, involving consumers such as the parent may contribute to the sustainability of behavioral interventions. Second, simulating naturalistic conditions may permit the experimental analysis of variables that may contribute to sustainability of behavioral interventions.