Effects of a brief staff training procedure on instructors’ use of incidental teaching and students’ frequency of initiation toward instructors

Incidental teaching is a technique that is used to increase the spontaneous use of language. This study evaluated effects of a brief staff training procedures on instructors’ incidental teaching responses and on student initiations. In three experiments, instructors of children with autism participated in individual or group training sessions under multiple baseline designs. In Experiment 1, three instructors were provided with multiple individualized training sessions that continued until instructors met a performance criterion during subsequent teaching sessions. In Experiment 2, groups of three instructors were provided with a single, 20-min one-to-one training session. Experiment 3 was a large-scale replication of Experiment 2 in which training was presented in a large group. Thus, across experiments, brief staff training in incidental teaching was conducted in a decreasingly individualized manner. Following staff training, there was a systematic increase in the occurrence of incidental teaching responses and of student initiations in each experiment. The findings suggest that brief training is a valid initial step toward improving the likelihood of incidental teaching and level of student initiation. The consistently positive initial effects of training warrant further research to identify methods to increase the magnitude and durability of training effects under such brief staff training procedures.