Shaping is an effective and well-established gradual change procedure for teaching new skills that is sometimes combined with other strategies, such as prompting. However, to the best of our knowledge, no review has been published that provides an overview of applications of response shaping in interventions for persons with developmental disabilities. While it is possible to combine response shaping with various prompts, it can also be used without prompts. Results of the current scoping review include a description of the reviewed studies, and a synthesis of the findings. This includes a study of participant samples, experimental designs, teaching settings, assessments used, social validity, and shaping outcomes. This includes a study of participant samples, experimental designs, teaching settings, assessments used, social validity, and shaping outcomes. A majority of the studies targeted persons with autism spectrum disorder, even though other diagnoses were also represented. Most studies employed single-case experimental designs and reported positive outcomes of response shaping, for a variety of target behaviors. This presentation will highlight and discuss the presence or absence of prompting in the reviewed studies. 

Policies of early childhood education (ECE) emphasize the significance of social play with peers for children’s well-being, learning, development, social participation, and inclusion. In Swedish ECE settings, the principle of children’s agency, with access to free play is also important. Previous studies show that children with disabilities and other special educational needs (SEN) could risk engaging less in social play with peers. Previous studies also show that it could be challenging in inclusive ECE teaching to balance the principles of agency and social participation for all children, with the concept of explicit teaching. Peerbased intervention and instruction (PBII) constitute a recommended practice for learning social skills and promoting social play between children in inclusive settings. In order to examine such, researchers need to consider the implementation context and the fidelity of the intervention, both in terms of its procedures and content. This presentation provides examples of a multiple case study, exploring the implementation of a PBII for social play skills, in four inclusive Swedishpreschools. It aims to contribute to discussing the implementation of complex interventions and means for treating feasibility and treatment fidelity in various ECE contexts, where views of social play, social learning, teaching, and care might vary. 

Some preschoolers may risk being less involved in play with peers, due to disabilities, other special educational needs (SEN), and non-adapted learning environments. Peer-based interventions and instructions (PBIIs) are complementary inclusive teaching methods. By using these, teachers can promote children's social skills and increase their social play participation. However, the outcomes of such interventions may vary for different children. To evaluate their effectiveness, researchers also need to consider the implementation contexts. Based on a holistic view of learning and development, preschools might contrast teaching and play. To test the concept and feasibility of explicitly teaching social play skills by using the PBII Play Time/Social Time (PT/ST), we conducted two multiple case studies in four Swedish preschools. PT/ST contains 28 learning activities including play, addressing social skills significant for play interactions and friendships. Four teachers implemented PT/ST in their settings. At each preschool, one child with a disability or other SEN (n = 4) and one or two socially skilled peers (n = 6) participated. We triangulated data from observational assessments, video observations, a group interview, teacher logbooks,audio-recorded coaching dialogues, and field notes. The results indicate that the teacher's implementation of PT/ST enabled the children to engage in social play and use social skills. Preliminary results also indicate that the teachers could adapt the intervention to their practice, by staging learning activities for social play and instructing and scaffolding the children to use social skills and play together. The presentation will discuss the didactic dimension of implementing PBIIs.

Teachers of inclusive early childhood education (ECE) are responsible for monitoring children’s social skills achievement, and promoting social play between children with and without special educational needs (SEN). The Teacher Impression Scale (TIS) is an observational assessment developed for this purpose. This study aims to explore the social validity of the Swedish version of TIS, TIS-S, and to evaluate its effectiveness in identifying participants for peer-mediated interventions in Swedish preschools; by also testing the internal consistency, and the construct and criterion-related validity of the scale. The teachers (N = 16) observed children with SEN (n = 16) and without SEN (n = 16) in social play situations with TIS-S and subsequently answered a survey. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results demonstrate that the TIS-S has high internal reliability. The TIS-S also discriminated between the groups of children with and without SEN, which provided evidence of construct and criterion validity. Social validity was verified as the teachers reported that TIS-S was suitable for recognising individual children’s need for support in interactions with peers, planning for adaptations for all children in the social learning environment, and reflecting on the complexity of children’s social behaviour in play.

This multiple case study investigated a peer-based intervention and instruction (PBII) for social play, Play Time/Social Time (PT/ST), in four inclusive Swedish preschools. PT/ST contains 28 learning activities where children playfully practice six social skills with significance for social play and friendships. One teacher in each preschool was trained and instructed to implement PT/ST, two with coaching early in the implementation, and two without. At each preschool, one child with special educational needs (SEN) in social play (n = 4) and one or two socially skilled peers (n = 6) participated. The study aimed to explore how the teachers perceived the influence of PT/ST on social engagement and social play skills in the children with SEN, with/without coaching, and if PT/ST supported social play between the children with and without SEN. It also aimed to examine the feasibility of PT/ST and the influence on preschool inclusion quality in the preschools, with/without coaching. Observational assessments and video observations were used. The results indicate that PT/ST was beneficial for the children with SEN to engage in social play with peers and practice social skills, and for the preschool’s inclusion quality regarding involvement in peer interactions and guidance in play, both with/without coaching for the teachers. However, the coaching strengthened the intervention fidelity. Social play occurred between the children with and without SEN in activities where they seemed similarly attracted by the toys and play materials and when they all could engage in the play goals, tasks, and roles. For this, they sometimes needed instructions and encouragement from the teachers.

Aim. The aim of this presentation is to describe: - the process that we adopted in order to develop an instrument to observe play and social interaction recorded in natural preschool settings; - the contents of the instrument.

The instrument will be used in a peer-mediated intervention based on Play Time/Social Time (Odom et al. 1997), where we need a reliable and valid measure of children’s play behaviour and social skill, which would make the external observers able to detect possible changes after the intervention and as a complement to other instruments, as teachers’ impressions ratings (TIS) and structured classroom observations (ICP).

Background. The program PTST was translated to Swedish. The contents of the interventions were discussed with students and practitioners and tested in small scale studies, showing a good social validity (Siljehag & Allodi, 2017). A pilot study was conducted in four preschools. The analysis of data from the trial is currently ongoing.

Procedure. We obtained an observation instrument that has been used in previous research on friendship for children with autism, the Friendship Observation Scale (FOS) (Bauminger, Aviezer & Rogers, 2004). Its contents matched fairly well our interventions’ contents.  We made a translation and adaptation. The contents of Social Participation Observation in Play (SPOP) were discussed with an expert educator from our team who tested it in field observations in preschool. After her feedback we reduced the number of behaviours to observe, retaining behaviours that were more likely to happen with young children, and that were targeted by the program. Simple Video Coder (Barto, Bird, Hamilton et al., 2017) or other available software will be used to code the videorecorded interactions. It will be used in the study: Social Interaction in play time and language activities (2018-00018) funded by  Skolforskningsinstitutet /Swedish Institute for Educational Research.