In an attempt to better fit my context and to better serve my needs for this year I am going to slightly alter and narrow the focus of my teacher inquiry project. The class and context that I work in requires a large support staff. Our instructional assistants take students out into the community daily to job sites, community activities, fact finding lessons , bus training and a variety of other activities designed to help our students grow toward independence. Our students have been diagnosed with a variety of disabilities and their only common thread lays in their behavioral needs. Each students disability manifests in a variety of behaviors that impact their ability to learn at the same rate as their peers.
This conversational blog could be a place to take reader suggestions on how to craft surveys, interviews and observations of my instructional assistant staff. Ultimately, I want to find out how IAs feel about their level of training to work with students with behavioral needs. My goal is to survey IAs in behavioral needs classrooms from around the district, observe and take data on the interactions my IAs have with our students and to interview selected IAs about their experiences and ideas on the topic of professional training.
Your thoughts are welcomed.
I like your idea of looking at instructional assistants feelings on their level of training on working with students with behavhioral needs. This has come up as a topic of conversation many times with I.A.'s. I think you will be able to get a good deal of data. I'm sure you already have these ideas flowing, but what are you looking at specifically with student and staff interactions? Are you looking at the level of engagement of the I.A. or the student or both. Are you going to take data on body language, tone of voice and/or word choice. Will you be checking for behavior support plans and whether or not the I.A. is implementing it? Discovering which training the I.A. has received on behavior and how well they are implementing it? Will you hold interviews with I.A.'s before or after observations or both? You have a great critical question and I look forward to conversing more. -Christopher
ReplyDeleteThanks for the input. You sparked some ideas and made me think about a few angles that I hadn't considered.
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