Coach to Teach: Effects of eCoaching on Special Education Teacher Implementation of Discrete Trial Training

The growing shortage of special education teachers (SETs) and declining retention rates across numerous United States (U.S.) school districts pose a serious threat to the quality of education provided to students with disabilities. One of the ongoing challenges is the significant gap between evidence-based practices (EBPs) and their actual implementation in classrooms. Researchers emphasize the importance of providing high-quality professional development (PD) targeting the use of EBPs in the classroom, as doing so has been linked to SET retention (Berry & Gravelle, 2013; Berry et al., 2011; Hagaman & Casey, 2018; Reagan et al., 2019). This study aimed to experimentally assess the effectiveness of eCoaching through online Bug-in-Ear (BIE) technology in improving SETs’ implementation fidelity of discrete trial training (DTT) when working with elementary-age students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).Further, the researcher examined whether SETs consistently maintained DTT implementation fidelity over time and whether they were able to generalize the use of DTT by applying it to other subject areas. A single-subject concurrent multiple-baseline research design, replicated across three SET participants, was used. The results indicated that all three participants significantly improved their use of DTT steps with fidelity while teaching academic skills to students with ASD. Furthermore, eCoaching with online BIE technology enabled SETs to maintain and generalize the DTT steps over time and across different academic subject areas. Finally, limitations and implications for future research and practice are discussed.