TIEE Directors Invited to Direct Instruction Conference

The Association for Direct Instruction invited Mary Taylor, Director of the Urban Skills Center, and Hillary Whiteside, Director of Children’s Workshop, to attend a conference in Eugene, Oregon on the use of Direct Instruction (DI) practices and materials with students with autism.

The TIEE Directors met with two eminent research professors of DI practices and outcomes, Tim Slocum, Ph.D., of Utah State University and Cathy Watkins, Ph.D., of California State University Stanislaus, to develop a workshop that would inform behavior analysts and other professionals the ways in which DI programs in the areas of language and reading are uniquely designed to address the needs of the learner with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

TIEE’s directors provided data on students who have successfully progressed in the DI programs as they have been modified to accommodate the special needs of the students in TIEE schools. A joint presentation is planned for the next California Association of Behavior Analysis (CalABA) Conference in February, 2010.