Children and adolescents generally receive the greatest proportion of their treatment through school- based educational programs. The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
2001( commonly referred to as No Child left Behind) and the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 have introduced both educators and parents to the term evidence- based practices. The purpose of introducing evidence- based practices emanates from the need for educators to identify treatments that have been clearly defined and tested and that yield clear results about the effectiveness of the treatments. The legislative requirement for evidence has spawned two major responses from researchers in special education. First, …show more content…
Many disciplines define evidence- based practices as treatments or approaches that have been found effective through replicated research.
Specifically, questions are posed, followed by the creation of a hypothesis, which is then tested. If a particular hypothesis is tested on several different occasions with different participants ( in this case students with autism) and the results are favorable, then a tentative decision is made that the particular treatment in question has an evidence base. “ Ultimately, such research should be able to demonstrate that there is a causal relationship between an educational intervention and immediate or long- term changes that occur in development, behavior, social relationships, and/ or normative life circumstances” ( National Research Council, 2001, p. 193). Testing a hypothesis is carried out by using a particular research design. Generally, research designs can be categorized into two broad categories: singlesubject designs ( also known as within- subject or single- case designs) and group designs ( also known as between- subject or experimental designs).
Experimental designs may include matched- subject designs, control …show more content…
For example, in a number of studies investigating the effects of schooling on children’s intelligence, many children are matched using a construct called socioeconomic status or SES.
This construct is often measured by asking mothers to identify their highest level of education. In the case of students with autism, researchers are often interested in the manifestation of symptoms ( e. g., behavioral or communication patterns). It may be difficult or even impossible to identify children with the same behavioral or communication profiles, which would enable a researcher to match children for a particular study. This difficulty does not completely eliminate the possibility of using group designs, but it does mean that a number of researchers ask questions that can be more easily answered using different experimental methods. The use of singlesubject designs and case studies is considered by those in the field of autism as appropriate given the challenges of experimental designs ( Odom, et al.,
2004). However, using single- subject designs can present challenges in identifying evidence- based practices for treatment and instruction