| Didactic training, performance feedback, and self-management techniques are three approaches employed to support teachers' use of programmatic and instructional techniques. Of these three approaches, self-management may represent the most cost-effective means of promoting teachers' generalized use of instructional protocol. Although it is intuitively appealing to assert that behaviors subject to self-management techniques should, and do, generalize across time and contexts, empirical support for such claims is sparse. The purpose of the present study was to assess the influence of a self-management protocol on 3 preschool teachers' generalized use of 3 classes of verbal statements delivered to children. More specifically, the present study was designed to assess acquisition, temporal generalization, generalization across activities (legs of the MBL design), and whether targeting one response class would result in changes in non-targeted response classes. Results of three multiple-baseline across behaviors designs (one for each participating teacher) were interpreted as suggesting that the self-management protocol was associated with acquisition of desirable statements made to children, and that generalization across time, setting, or response classes occurred in isolated instances. Interpretation and implications of these results are discussed. |
