Excerpted from chapter 5 of Teachers' Guides to Inclusive Practices: Student- Directed Learning, by Martin Agran, Ph.D., Margaret King-Sears, Ph.D., Michael L. Wehmeyer, Ph.D., and Susan R. Copeland, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2003 Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

In the first three steps, students with disabilities become familiar with the language and actions that they will eventually self-evaluate. The rationale for improving behaviors is also identified. For many students, these steps can be accomplished in one instructional session, depending on the behaviors selected and characteristics of the students.

Step 1: Name the Desired Behavior and Demonstrate Examples and Nonexamples

Whether speaking of a work product (e.g., assignment completion accuracy) or a skill (e.g., appropriate behavior during class or work time), the terms or language used to name or identify the behavior need to be clear to the student. Because the self-evaluation system introduced in Step 4 will require the student to rate the behavior, the examples and nonexamples used in Step 1 should go beyond simply answering the question “Is this appropriate behavior?” or “Is this not appropriate behavior?” to include a range of performances, for example:

•  Am I being good most of the time, some of the time, or none of the time?
  
• Is my behavior very good, okay, or poor?
  
  
• I will demonstrate “very good.” I will demonstrate “okay.” I will demonstrate “poor.”
  
  

Step 2: Discuss the Benefits of the Desired Behavior

The benefits of behaving appropriately should be clear to the students. On some level, students should understand or realize that responding appropriately is more desirable and results in some benefit for them. For some students with disabilities who have difficulty understanding the concept of “benefits,” teachers may convey this idea by providing verbal praise or facial expressions that communicate to the student that appropriate performance is desired. Other students with disabilities may communicate benefits of the desired behavior by words or phrases, depending on their verbal and cognitive skill levels. For example, a student with more severe cognitive disabilities whose target behavior is getting ready for school on time may communicate benefits by pointing to pictures of himself already dressed and groomed appropriately and at school, with a clock showing he is on time. Another student who is working on completing a task may briefly and verbally indicate benefits for herself by saying “Work is done well!” or a similar phrase.

Many students with disabilities can understand and communicate the concept of benefits, however, in which case the teachers need to make sure the benefits are motivating for the student, not the teacher! For example, one high school teacher who was teaching social skills to students with developmental disabilities was quite sure of what she considered to be the benefits of improved social behaviors for the students (e.g., making friends). During Step 2 of this instructional sequence, however, she needed to figure out what the students would consider beneficial. First, the teacher rephrased the term benefits into the question “How can this help you?” This elicited from them some ways that “better listening and talking and acting” would help them: “I could talk better with other students in the halls while changing classes”; “I could start conversations with friends outside of class time”; and “I could say more when other kids are talking together.”

Step 3: Provide Opportunities to Practice the Desired Behavior and Name the Mastery Criteria

Practice sessions help to clarify for the student what a behavior’s best performance looks like, feels like, and/or sounds like when the range of performances have occurred. Because self-evaluation will require the student to exhibit and judge a range of behaviors, it is helpful in Step 3 to put words with those behaviors and to show what they look like. For example, if the targeted behavior is increased on-task performances, students will practice and name “very good,” “good,” and “poor” performances during Step 3. Practice in Step 3 should be simple and brief. During this step, the self-evaluation device is not used — it is not until Step 4 that the self-evaluation device is introduced. Familiarizing the student with terms and phrases used in subsequent steps can be introduced here, but there is not an expectation that the student will reach mastery or attains proficiency in Step 3.

Introduce the Self-Evaluation Device that the Student Will Use

Step 4: Describe the Self-Evaluation Procedure

During Steps 4 and 5, teachers demonstrate and model the self-evaluation system (i.e., the device and procedures for using the device). These steps can often be accomplished in one instructional session. During Step 4, the continuum of examples and nonexamples practiced in Steps 1 and 3, as well as the benefits of improving the targeted behavior (Step 2), are now attached to the self-evaluation device as the material (i.e., the device) and the procedure (i.e., how the student uses the device) the student will use to keep up with how he or she is doing relative to the target behavior. During Step 4, the teacher describes the self-evaluation device, including how a student rates him- or herself according to the continuum of ratings noted on the device.

The time interval at which the student actually self-evaluates is usually condensed for Step 4. That is, even if the teacher plans for the student to self-evaluate approximately every 15 minutes (in the natural environment), practice during Step 4 (also Steps 5 and 6) as the student is learning the strategy will be more frequent. During Step 4, the teacher may be using an audiotape with tones every 10–40 seconds as the time interval for demonstration purposes. Or the teacher may complete a portion of one task and then evaluate him- or herself based on the performance of the portion of the task completed during Step 4. The teacher describes and demonstrates a variety of performances intentionally so that the student becomes familiar with both the rating system (i.e., the self-evaluation device) and which rating “fits” which performance.

Self-evaluation rating systems can use pictures, numbers, phrases, or letters that represent a range of performances. Middle school students at risk for school failure used a self-evaluation procedure with letter grades associated with their behaviors (Peterson, Young, West, & Peterson, 1999). The letter grades matched the school’s report card grading system for citizenship:

• H = Honorary: Student exhibits all classroom behaviors expected by the teacher.
  
  
• S = Satisfactory: Student meets all but one teacher expectation.
  
  
• N = Needs improvement: Student meets all but two teacher expectations.
  
  
• U = Undesirable: Student meets all but three teacher expectations.
  

Although this rating system may seem straightforward, the criteria for meeting teachers’ expectations must be made explicit to the students so that they can accurately self-evaluate. As noted previously, teachers must be very clear when communicating to students what the varied ratings refer to in terms of a range of behaviors or expectations.

Step 5: Model the Self-Evaluation System While Performing the Desired Behavior

During the modeling phase, the teacher “thinks aloud” how to use the self-evaluation device in Step 5. By modeling (thinking aloud), the teacher makes explicit the thinking processes used to make decisions about relative performance of a behavior. In this respect, this procedure is similar to self-instruction (see Chapter 3). Here are a few examples:

•  “I just heard the beep. Okay. Now I rate my behavior for the whole time since I heard the last beep. Has my behavior been very good, okay, or not very good? I need to look at the pictures of very good, okay, and not very good behaviors. Which looks most like what I’ve been doing? Well, I did get all of my work done, I did not talk with my classmates except about the work, and I have been working without interruptions. I think that’s a very good rating, so that’s what I’ll mark on my checklist.”
  
  
• “There’s the timer going off. How much work have I accomplished? Have I been doing a lot of work, okay work, or not enough work? Well, I did spend a few minutes talking with a classmate about what we watched on the television last night, but I did also get most of my work done. I think I should get an okay rating — I could have worked better, but I did do some of my work.”
  
  
• “It’s time to change subjects — that’s when I rate myself for the quality of work I’ve been doing during this subject. Has my quality been excellent, very good, good, okay, or needs improvement? I need to compare what I did and how I did it with the ‘excellent’ sample to help me rate my work quality. Hmmm... let me see... This looks better than the ‘good’ sample, but not as good as the ‘excellent’ sample. I think my rating should be ‘very good.’ ”
  

It is also important in Steps 4 and 5 for teachers to describe and model behaviors and ratings that are not excellent. By focusing on the continuum of possible ratings and demonstrating those, students are more likely to be able to distinguish the difference among ratings when they begin to practice in role plays and ultimately in natural environments.

Provide Practice and Assess Mastery

Step 6: Provide Guided Practice for Using the Self-Evaluation Procedures and Materials Using Role Plays

The remaining steps focus on practice, proficiency, and discussions, ensuring that students know how, when, and why to use self-evaluation. Most instructional time occurs in Steps 6 and 7, in which practice and proficiency occur.

Although students are actively involved in Steps 1-5, their involvement increases in Step 6 when all prior activity converges into putting it all together using role plays and other types of practices. Now students begin their movement from practicing using the self-evaluation system with more teacher feedback needed initially to using the self-evaluation system more independently. Role plays and controlled or simulated situations enable students to increase their proficiency with using the procedures. Teachers may use a few or many role plays — the point in Step 6 is that sufficient practice opportunities be offered to enable students to achieve mastery in Step 7. More time spent in Step 6 increases the likelihood that students can accurately self-evaluate in natural environments.

Step 7: Assess Student’s Mastery of the Self-Evaluation Procedures within the Role-Play Situation

The teacher checks that each student can accurately self-evaluate in role-play situations. Consider that students may be assessed using the checklist for Step 7 several times and then circulate back to role plays in Step 6 — until they reach mastery in Step 7.

Step 8: Discuss the Specific Situation in Which Self-Evaluation Will Be Used

In Step 8, the teacher makes clear during what subject, task, or time period the student will use the self-evaluation strategy. Instead of using the self-evaluation all day initially, one suggestion is to focus on one time period or task or set of tasks during the day. That way, the teacher and student are more likely to experience success, and it will be easier and faster to transfer use of self-evaluation to other tasks or parts of the school day. Also, Step 8 may address the following issues:

• Where will the self-evaluation device be located?
  
  
• Where is the timer, if a timer is used to cue when to self-evaluate? Who sets the timer?
  
  
• Where should the student put the self-evaluation device after it has been completed for that time period?
  
  
• Who makes sure that materials are ready each day?
  
  
• When will the teacher and student follow up?
  

Step 9: Provide Independent Practice Opportunities

Practice sessions in the natural classroom environment with the teacher overseeing the student’s performance provide an opportunity for the teacher to provide feedback and praise the student’s use of the self-evaluation strategy. As the student becomes more competent, feedback should be systematically decreased.

Step 10: Assess Student’s Mastery of the Self-Evaluation within the Natural Environment

Step 10 is a prompt to teachers to provide feedback, praise, and “booster” or retraining sessionsregarding the student’s use of self-evaluation in the classroom. Some students begin to generalize their improved performance in places other than the targeted environments — a highly desirable outcome for all students with or without disabilities. Although the ultimate objective is to ensure that the student is using the strategy independently, the teacher should continue to provide some level of follow up. One way to do this is to complete a rating scale device concurrently with the student periodically, to ensure that the student is using it correctly.

Finally, in the fourth phase of SPIN, teachers continue to collect student data so that they can note the impact of the self-evaluation intervention to determine whether the desired behavioral changes are occurring.