An Evaluation of an EDY Course in Behavioural Techniques for Classroom Assistants in a School for Children with Severe Learning Difficulties

This study is an evaluation of a behavioural skills training course (known as the Education of the Developmentally Young‐‐EDY) which was run for eight classroom assistants (all trained nursery nurses) at an ESN (S) school in Manchester. It arose out of a previous study (Farrell, 1982) which suggested that while teachers improved their practical skills following EDY training, classroom assistants did not. In this study the classroom assistants were filmed working with an individual child on four occasions; twice prior to their training, once immediately following it and once more ten weeks later. The video tapes were randomly arranged and shown to two independent and trained raters. The raters rated the classroom assistants on four aspects of behavioural teaching, all of which are integral parts of the EDY course. The results showed that taking all the teaching techniques together, the classroom assistants made significant gains following training but that these gains were only evident on two of the behavioural techniques when they were analysed separately. When comparing the findings of this work with other studies, the main conclusion is that, although classroom assistants do benefit from EDY training, their progress may not be so marked as that of classroom teachers.