Kansas, Minnesota, and Vermont – Wonderful people and thank you for making this mini-self-modeling tour a great success and a fun adventure. I found it interesting that video-modeling, in some form, was being used in each of these states and the testimonials were very positive. Many of the applications shared with me were examples of self-modeling. I would love to see accounts of the use and outcomes posted to the forum on our site. Some notes from the tour:

- Italian Nachos were very good in MN. I now know there was a St. Scholastica. Was there a St. Cloud? I picked up good info listening to other presenters.

- I was told to tell all my students who shuffle paper and start packing up 10 mins. before class is over that I got a standing ovation in MN.

- Sorry if I offended any constructivists in VT. I will learn more about Ideation.

- Autism Societies are alive and well in each of these states.

The hospitality shown in each of these sites was phenomenal. I was humbled by the kind and generous gestures extended to me. Now back to more summer writing.

Lately, I have been getting requests for workshops/seminars/webinars/webexes etc. regarding self-modeling. Last month I presented a Webex from Fort Hays State University to the Kansas Autism Network. This was transmitted to about 100 parents and professionals around the state. My thanks to the wonderful people there who helped out and made my stay very enjoyable. That was my first time to KS.
Prior to the KS presentation I participated in the American Speech and Hearing Association’s Annual Online Conference. I produced a 15-slide PowerPoint presentation, to go with an hour long phone interview that attendees could view at their leisure and then did an hour of online Q & A live. Another new experience and I didn’t even have to get out of my seat in my office for that one which reached about 260 participants.
In June, I will be traveling to Vermont to kick-off their annual Autism Training.
Next month I i will be doing a webinar interview with Linda Hodgson at Autism Family Online. She is doing a month of webinars on using video with children with autism. You need to be a member to participate, and I’m not sure what the cost is for that. Linda says she typically has around 2500 people viewing her webinars.
I’m also waiting for confirmation from two other events.
It seems that word is spreading about VSM and other forms of video modeling. I’ve been hearing more and more about people using it with very positive effects. If you are using it, please communicate with us here at Siskin Children’s Institute about your experiences.

This is a link to a study completed by David Smith in England involving “PETTLEP” Imagery. I’ll let you read this very interesting article, but let me sum it up here. A combination of physical exercise plus viewing a video of their workouts followed by focused imaging of the video resulted in equivalent gains to people who had worked out twice as long as the PETTLEP group.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+effect+of+PETTLEP+imagery+on+strength+performance.(Report)-a0200185594

Does this mean we don’t have to exercise any more as long as we visualize it? No. A PETTLEP only group did not make gains. However, if the findings here are accurate and can be duplicated, it would mean that visual imagery (stimulated by video recordings) can facilitate muscle strength beyond what workout alone can produce!!!

PETTLEP uses a procedure called point-of-view modeling which is a variation of  self-modeling and probably much easier to produce. Rather than viewing themselves doing a behavior, children view the behavior as they would naturally. The camera is held at eye level as a behavior is performed. To viewers it seems as if they are seeing the action through their eyes.

Jeff Hines and Mark Wolery at Vanderbilt published the first research article on this method’s use with children with autism in Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, June, 2006. What a great topic for theses or dissertation.

In a recent post Michael referred to a website about technology use in special education: http://tech-in-sped.ning.com/

The site includes a section on video-modeling. Part of this, in turn, is aimed at bringing researchers and users together. Definitely worth a visit.

Preschool services (Section 619 of Part B of IDE[I]A) have always been in a strange position. On the one hand, they receive much attention; on the other, they receive scant attention. They receive much attention in training in university programs for young children with disabilities, where much of the training is directed at preschool-aged children. In part, this emphasis is because of location: Students can be placed in classrooms for internships and student teaching, whereas placing students in home-based programs is much more problematic. Attention to preschool services is supposedly also revealed in conference presentations, where organizers and attendees alike are concerned about whether enough of the program is devoted to infants and toddlers and their families.

• Just how are preschool services organized?
• What is the rationale?
• How much are administrators paying to dosage issues?
• Who are the targets of services?
• What philosophies underpin services?
• How much focus is on the influences of children’s learning–children’s learning opportunities?

These questions are related, and I will attempt to answer some of them. Others are for decision makers, practitioners, and families to consider, because my experience is that they often fail to consider them.

First, we can assume that, owing to what we now know about young brains and have long known about successful parenting, young children learn throughout the day better than they do in “lessons.” This is related to the power of natural discriminative stimuli and to the difficulty young children, particularly those with developmental delays, have with generalization or “transfer.”

Second, we can assume that what they are learning is far more than preschool behaviors (sitting, playing with play dough, negotiating with peers, etc.): They are still learning language, what their growing bodies can and cannot do, and how the world works, which is why learning opportunities exist throughout the day. This concept of alocated learning time is critical for understanding the difference between early childhood education and later education. The older children get, the more their learning can be concentrated into “school” (or Sunday school or piano lesson) time. In the preschool years, caregivers have the opportunity to teach throughout the day. This should make early childhood special educators think about their roles and opportunities.

Third, family systems theory, helpgiving theory, social support theory, and behavioral-ecological theory do not come to a grinding halt when the child turns three years of age. In Part C, there is some understanding that the whole of a child’s waking hours is potential intervention time and that the environments in which the child finds him- or herself influence learning. Unfortunately, even though this understanding exist in theory, even in Part C it does not always translate into action. The situation is even worse in preschool, however, where service coordination is no longer a mandated service and where the (special) education mentality is pervasive.

• If family systems theory were acknowledged, preschool services would be organized to provide emotional, material, and informational support to families, including the systematic assessment of their needs and accountability on the IEP (if that document must continue to be the driving document) for developing family-level goals and providing supports to meet those goals.
• If helpgiving theory were acknowledged, preschool services would have an expanded view of family-centered practice, so they would attempt to meet families’ needs for emotional, material, and informational support, rather than thinking that “parent participation” in school activities was most important.
• If social support theory were acknowledged, preschool services would see the link between child learning and family well-being and family well-being (quality of life) and their social support, especially informal support. Early childhood special education would therefore spend at least a little time getting to know families’ ecologies and helping families preserve and, if they desire, expand their informal-support networks.
• If behavioral-ecological theory were acknowledged, preschool services would assess children’s functioning throughout their typical day, through a family interview, and develop intervention plans that followed our knowledge of how young children learn. These plans would use children’s interests and natural learning opportunities to teach them skills so they can participate successfully (i.e., be engaged) in their home, community, and school routines (activities).

Now let’s discuss the number of hours that preschool services are provided to a child. If the child can go to school five mornings a week (e.g., 20 hours, allowing for a full 4 hours a morning instead of the measly 2.5 hours some preschool programs offer) or three full days a week (e.g., 15 hours, allowing for a full 8 hours), the school environment becomes a true learning environment. The child spends enough time there for learning opportunities to be distributed across time, and the child’s “caregivers” during that time (i.e., teaching staff) spend enough time with the child that they become direct instructional or intervention agents themselves. This can be labeled the classroom model.

If these classrooms are self-contained (i.e., having only children with disabilities), they represent a dated approach that potentially violates moral and legal positions. If they are inclusive (i.e., at least half the children in each classroom have no disabilities), these classrooms are defensible and potentially excellent. This article is not about inclusion; it is about attention to children’s learning opportunities and to their families.

Many preschool services are offered on a much leaner schedule, such as one to four 2.5-hour mornings a week, with the number of mornings being related to either the severity of the child’s disability or the number of services the child has on the IEP. When a child is “at school” for such a small percentage of his or her waking time, we have to ask what the point of this service time should be. The child is transported in, sometimes by school bus, which is another whole discussion, sometimes by parents. Usually, the child is left “at school” for these short bursts of early childhood special education and related services. Family communication is limited to (a) notebooks, (b) intermittent home visits, or (c) discussions at arrival and departure, sometimes, with those families who do drop off and pick up their children. Often, that communication is about what the school people are working on, what the child did, and what the family can do to support the school’s efforts. Sometimes, these short sessions at school are thought of as the times the child comes in for his or her therapies and special ed. Short times at school (i.e., fewer than 15 hours a week) can be thought of as the playgroup/clinic model.

Some preschool services are offered through itinerant services, which have the potential to acknowledge the theoretical bases I earlier described. Itinerant teachers can consult with a child’s regular caregivers/teachers in  child care or other classroom-based settings, such as Head Start. If the consultation is done well, using an individualized-within-routines approach and not a pull-out approach, this model of service delivery has the potential to expand intervention throughout the child’s classroom day every day. Unfortunately, sometimes itinerant services are restricted to special education, with the therapies still happening in clinical types of settings at a school. If therapists can also travel to children’s regular-early-childhood classroom settings and adopt a “consultative approach to direct services” (which is not as contradictory as it sounds), we really have the potential to provide meaningful intervention. There’s still the family piece though…. This approach is labeled the itinerant model.

School districts fear that the itinerant model is too expensive, compared to keeping all the personnel in centralized locations and shipping the children in, in groups. For the reasons given above, this solution has to be considered pragmatic but atheoretical, if the playgroup/clinic model is adopted. Beginning steps for preschool administrators can include the following.

1. Become familiar with the literature on the theory and research related to the concepts described in this article, so decisions are made on intellectually and empirically defensible grounds.
2. Work towards converting the playgroup/clinic sessions into family support sessions. After all, because they consist of such short bursts, many families are presumably available to transport the children or to care for them when they’re not “at school.” Do not call this “school” time, because that has the connotation of teachers working directly with children, and these family support sessions will be much more than that.
3. Take all the FTEs currently devoted to preschool special ed and related services, acknowledging that some therapists might work also with older children, and divide that number into the number of children with IEPs. Consider this then to be potential caseloads, with one professional serving as the primary interventionist with that child and family in whatever location seems appropriate. This is a radical but highly commonsensical approach to resource distribution–and defensible on child-learning and service delivery grounds.
4. Expand itinerant services, once caseloads are reallocated to a primary service provider. Ensure this is done with both therapies and special education, not just the latter.