Barriers, Facilitators and Implications for Practice: Secondary Findings from a Program Evaluation of a Novel School Based Community Based Instruction (CBI) Program in Elementary School for Students with Autism

ABSTRACT

A mixed methodologies study was completed to evaluate an elementary school-based Community-Based Instruction (CBI) program for students with autism and secondary findings were identified in the focus group analysis related to barriers to program success, facilitators of program success and implications for practice including occupational therapy. Developed and coordinated by an occupational therapist, the program’s mission was to develop work behaviors, job skills, social skills, career interests, and self-determination skills by generalizing knowledge from the classroom through the performance of jobs within the elementary school. Jobs in the school community included running a coffee cart, performing library jobs, organizing a Lost and Found, maintaining a garden, and running a farmer’s market to name a few. The program evaluation results showed positive program knowledge and positive attitudes among three stakeholder groups (staff, parents, and administrators) through quantitative and qualitative findings. Through the thematic analysis of the focus groups, barriers to program implementation, facilitators of program success and implications for practice were identified including implications for school-based occupational therapy practitioners which this article further explains.

KEYWORDS:

• Autism
• Community-based instruction
• program evaluation
• elementary school
• transition
• school-based occupational therapy

Acknowledgements

This study was done in fulfillment of a doctoral degree to fulfill dissertation requirements. The authors would like to thank Dr. Girija Kaimal for her expertise in program evaluation and Dr. Michele Wiley for her neutral facilitation of the focus groups. In addition, the authors would like to thank the parents, staff, and administrators that took part in this program evaluation and the students who participate in this program.

Disclosure statement

In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy and my ethical obligation as a researcher, I am reporting that this research occurred in the researcher’s school district in fulfillment of a doctoral dissertation. The program evaluation was designed as part of a dissertation and was implemented by the researcher who is an occupational therapist with over 25 years of experience. This researcher developed the program and also coordinated and organized this program. Bracketing strategies, field note journaling, a neutral facilitator in the focus groups, thematic analysis with three researchers requiring unanimous agreement on codes and committee meetings were used as a way to prevent bias and to ensure trustworthiness in the implementation of the study, during analysis and in the interpretation of data.

There is no financial interest or benefits from this research. I have disclosed those interests fully to Taylor & Francis and I have an approved plan for managing any potential conflict arising from my research in my school district.

Data Availability Statement

Data from the program evaluation are deposited in a secure served at Drexel University. The dissertation reports the research findings for both quantitative and qualitative findings. These results can be found in the dissertation:

Schwind (2018) Evaluating a novel approach to community-based instruction in the elementary school for students with autism. [Drexel University] ProQuest (10826590). doi.org/10.17918/D8K95P

Participants in stakeholder-specific focus groups and all participants filled out a study-specific quantitative survey with primary measures of program knowledge and attitudes (Schwind, Orlin, Davidson, & Kaimal, 2021).

Additional information

Funding

This work was performed to meet the requirements of the doctoral dissertation from Drexel University.