QUANTITATIVE TRADITION Nature of the Pr

This study asked the general question, "What teaching strategies will be effective in enabling me to minimize non-verbal, autistic students' exhibition of aggression?" The proposed research utilizes action research in the form of a time-series design to implement Stanley Greenspan's (1998) notion of "floor time" as a general method of reducing aggression in children with autism. Floor Time includes several interactive teaching strategies, all of which are child directed, in a low stimulus environment, ranging from two to five hours a day.

According to Greenspan (1998), floor time methods not only operate to reduce aggressiveness in non-verbal autistic children but they also increase their degree of verbal behavior. Floor time methods involve the use of several teaching strategies, only some of which may be directly applicable to reducing aggressive behavior. The proposed research will determine which of these teaching strategies are the most effective for reducing aggression.

The research design used in the study will be the time-series design consisting of a pretest, a posttest, and then a second posttest of aggression plus the collection of teacher feedback on maximally effective aggression reduction teaching strategies during the two posttest periods. This design can be graphically depicted as follows:

Outcome A....Pretest, Intervention, Posttest1, Posttest 2

Outcome B....Pretest, Intervention, Postt

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ic students who meet the subject selection criteria. Permission from parents of all children will be obtained before admitting children to the study and parents will be assured of the confidentiality of all findings. Instrumentation The measure of aggression in the proposed research will be Shapiro's (2000) Aggressive Behavior Checklist which can be used by teachers to assess a wide range of both verbal and non-verbal aggressive behaviors. There is a specific form just for teachers to rate students. According to Shapiro (2000), the instrument can be used to provide a multidimensional picture of the aggressive behavior of students between 11 and 13 years of age, and can be applied to both regular and special education children. The instrument contains norms and utilizes Likert type scaling for a total of 17 aggressive behaviors. Shapiro reports moderate to good reliability data with test-rest values averaging 0.69 and internal consistency coefficients at .91. Criterion validity was tested and found to be acceptable. The measure of teaching strategies will consist of a researcher-designed instrument. This instrument will collect teacher ratings of each of the various teaching strategies used in Greenspan's (1998) Floor time int
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1369
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)