Welcome to Relationship-based Practices for Providing Responsive Technical Assistance (RaPPoRT)

This online course will be a mix of web-based presentations, discussion boards, and readings. This course is facilitated by Mary Howard (bio below).

Support

• Content support is provided by the course facilitator, Mary Howard,mary.howard@uky.edu. 
• Technical support is available by using the Contact Us button below. 

Resources

To open, save and or print the Introduction handout, click here.

Additional documents that are referenced but not required to download:

• Early Childhood Education Professional Development – Training and Technical Assistance Glossary
• Kentucky Early Childhood Professional Development Framework
• Reflective Writing, Higher Education and Professional Practice

Families and clinicians sometimes differ on what kinds of information are most important to them beyond that basic phenotype. The chart below, based on research by Katie Berrier, shows the top ten priorities identified by parents who receive a prenatal diagnosis and genetic counselors delivering a prenatal diagnosis. Clinicians tend to value genetic and health information while families are more concerned about available supports and social implications; however, they both value the importance of printed/written materials.

Historically, clinicians have tended to favor what is called a “medical model” of disability which frames disabilities in the context of the medical problems associated with them. While these medical issues are important to address for health reasons, there is a social model of disability which suggests that many of the challenges associated with disabilities can be addressed with better support, services, and social attitudes.

In comparing the information viewed as most important by genetic counselors and parents, you can see the interplay of both of those models.

References:

Sheets KB, Best RG, Brasington CK, Will MC. Balanced information about Down syndrome: What is essential? Am J Med Genet A. 2011;155:1246–1257

This is a review of how an ARC must use the Kentucky Alternate Assessment Participation Guidelines to determine if a student is eligible to participate in the alternate assessment. 

When you are ready to begin click Topic 2.1. 

The Alternate Assessment Participation Guidelines is intended to help guide an ARC in determining whether the Kentucky Alternate Assessment (Alternate K-Prep) based on alternate achievement standards, is the most appropriate assessment for an individual student with the most significant cognitive disability. 

ARCs must consider a student’s individual characteristics when determining whether a student with a disability should participate in the general assessment with or without accommodations, or in an alternate assessment.  This document outlines steps that an ARC should take in determining whether participating in the alternate assessment is appropriate for a student. Those steps include: (a) reviewing student records, progress monitoring data and important information across multiple school years and multiple settings (e.g., school, home, community), and (b) determining whether the student fits all of the required criteria for participating in the alternate assessment as outlined in the participation guidelines document form. 

To continue with the course, click Topic 1.1 below. 

Learn about how progress for disability rights—through implementation of laws and support services—has improved outcomes for people with Down syndrome and other genetic conditions.

“Grades do not equal learning”

Michelle Miller

Once you have identified the Behavior, Core Content, and KSA’s you will need to determine how you will measure success. Measures of success will directly relate back to the issue at hand, the behavior you want to change, and any training/workplace outcomes.  Simply put, a measure of success is how you will assess participants’ change in knowledge, skills, and attitude.   

Measures of success can be interwoven into activities, assignments, and evaluations.  How you choose to measure success depends on the trainer, the training style, and the delivery of the training – face to face, online, independent study, etc.  There is not necessarily a correct or incorrect way to measure success and there are many different methods in which you can measure success.  Methods can include quizzes, video observation, completed documents, practice activities, etc.   

However, the measure of success must align with the K-S-A. A change in attitude is probably not going to be measured by a multiple-choice quiz. Many online courses rely on objective quizzes alone to measure change.

Student-centered assessment methods can also encourage learning outcomes. Some researchers, like Davis and Summers (2014), suggested that learners who participate in the evaluation and assessment process are more likely to have higher learning outcomes. For instance, Davis and Summers (2014) had students in a leadership course create a guidebook with practical recommendations for leaders. As a result, students had the opportunity to reflect on leadership theories and their applications in the workplace.  

Reference:

Davis, Beverly and Michele Summers. QScience Proceedings, Engineering Leaders Conference 2014 on Engineering Education, Aug 2015, Volume 2015, 6. https://www.qscience.com/content/papers/10.5339/qproc.2015.elc2014.6

Over the past 50 years, the outcomes for people with disabilities has evolved significantly through access to better healthcare, supports and services, and educational and community inclusion. These developments over time are what make it so vital for clinicians to have access to the most up-to-date and accurate information available for different genetic conditions currently included in the prenatal screening panel. The information given at the moment of diagnosis can shape perceptions for a lifetime and significantly impact families.

Learn about how access to supports and services, good healthcare, inclusion (and the lack thereof) significantly shaped the outcomes for two generations in one family.

“The role of active learning is to guide students by incorporating their own meaning.”   

Tammie Kaufman, Active Learning in an Online Environment  

Effective training leads to a change in behavior, which leads to improved quality of services for children and families.  

With that in mind, you also need to consider time limits to the training session.  As a Trainer, you are there to support the change in staff behavior, but you must look at what can be covered, realistically, in the allotted time.  Training will not be able to cover every piece of information that could be shared.  When creating an effective training you will prune the information, and only keep the information pertinent to the behavior change.

Content Pruning

To help with the process of pruning down your training, ask yourself “Do you need this content for the assessment?”.  If the answer is yes, keep the content.  If the answer is “no” decide if you would like to provide this information as a resource (reference information, handout, articles they can choose to read to explain in more detail, etc.) or if you would like to delete this information from the training entirely.   

The pruning process also includes limiting how many behaviors you would like to address/change.  In a typical two-hour training, you will most likely only be able to cover one behavior change adequately.  Having too many outcomes will not allow ample time to teach, process, and assess behavior changes.   

A training objective helps both the learners and instructors keep to the purpose of the training. The KSA (Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes) model can be beneficial when it comes to writing good learning objectives. A training objective helps both the learners and instructors keep to the purpose of the training. The KSA (Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes) model can be beneficial when it comes to writing good learning objectives. These learning objectives can be either training outcomes to be learned during the training, or workplace outcomes to be implemented after the training. It is important your trainings have both types of outcomes.

The KSA model stands for knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Training courses often focus on increasing or changing the knowledge, skills, or attitudes of learners. However, in order to change learners’ behaviors, it is important to address all three (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) when writing learning objectives. Most training addresses knowledge and skills, but few address the attitude.

• Knowledge learning objectives often require learners to be able to recall information.
• Skills learning objectives require learners to be able to perform specific tasks
• Attitude can be defined as someone’s feelings, emotions, beliefs and values about something, and is often reflected in a person’s behavior.

Reference: The Peak Performance Center, Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes: https://thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/learning/process/obtaining/obtaining-information/knowledge-skills-attitudes/

When creating training it can be easy to focus attention on what  you  think is important or what  you  like.  However, in doing so, you may not meet the immediate needs of the participants, in which case participants will not be motivated to use the new information and skills when they return to their workplace. Training will not be effective if the participants do not find the information useful or if it does not address the change in behavior that needs to be made.  

Completing a needs assessment and using specific data (observations, trend information, reports, etc.) will help you identify the issue the program is facing.  Once you know the issue you can identify the behaviors that are contributing to the problem.  When brainstorming behaviors it is important to not make assumptions about what you believe is causing the issue.  It can be easy to make assumptions but doing so would be a disservice to the individuals completing the training.  If the behaviors causing the issue are not identified and addressed participants will not have an opportunity to make a change in their behavior.   

To create training content, first, you must figure out what you are training on. Sounds simple, right? Planning and developing your training can take longer than the actual amount of time you spend conducting the training. Studies indicate that a unit of training can take many hours to create. According to some studies a one-hour training can take on average 55 hours to create. 

Understanding the training need can help you use your planning time effectively. And, most importantly, it can help make sure your training leads to a change in workplace behaviors.

Throughout this course we will follow a trainer who is creating a training plan using the problem based approach. Watch this video to observe the trainer, Bambi, interview a child care director. Note how they discuss the issues the director has seen.

Source: https://www.td.org/insights/how-long-does-it-take-to-develop-training-new-question-new-answers

If we look at the basic phenotype of people with Down syndrome, it hasn’t changed much over the past 50 years. Most people with Down syndrome have common physical characteristics. They are also usually shorter than average. They commonly have low muscle tone, increased chances for various health conditions (such as heart defects and gastrointestinal issues), and mild to moderate intellectual disabilities. About 250,000 people in the US have Down syndrome, and about 1 in 800 babies are born with the condition.​

Learn more about prenatal testing in the US and what types of information families and clinicians find valuable.

Below, you will submit a final project. This project will be graded by the course facilitator within 3 working days.

Be sure that your project is attractive, informative, and has been proofed for spelling, grammar, and formatting. It will be a product that you can proudly use!

Credits

A big thanks ? to the following individuals who provided feedback and ideas for this course. They include Beth Green, Lessa Croley, Kathy Mullin, and Becky Brown, as well as Casey Turner, Melissa Hardison, Paula Goff, and Bethany Hughes. Their feedback made the course more useful and clear!

Congratulations!!

You have made it through the course requirements. A few additional items before you access your certificate.

If you have additional questions or comments about the content, please use the “contact us” button at the bottom of the page.

Kentucky Early Care and Education Professionals

Please complete the form below. If you mark “no” credit for completion of this course WILL NOT be added to your ECE-TRIS professional development record.

Your individual training record in ECE-TRIS will be updated within 10 days with the course credit. ECE-TRIS is a training registry for early care and education providers and gives you 24/7 access to your professional learning record: https://tris.eku.edu/ece

Purpose: After completing Lesson 4, you will be able to:

• state the relationship between 5AAs and federal funding for First Steps; and

• find Annual State Performance Plan reports on the First Steps website.

This lesson examines the relationship between your assessments, child progress reporting, and funding for First Steps.  Your 5AAs serve many purposes, some of which you may not be aware of. As we’ve discussed, they measure child progress, guide your work with children and families, and inform state and federal funding for First Steps.