Young children with intensive behavioral needs are often served by paraprofessionals, who are typically among the least trained and least supported staff in the school. While professional development opportunities to address challenging behavior are generally limited for special education teachers, such professional growth opportunities are often completely unavailable for paraprofessionals. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a program in which teachers served as coaches for paraprofessionals. Using a multiple-baseline design across paraprofessional-and-child dyads, we evaluated the effects of the teachers-as-coaches program on paraprofessional implementation fidelity and child engagement in challenging behavior and appropriate communication. The results showed that with teacher coaching, paraprofessionals increased their behavior intervention implementation fidelity to 100%. During the maintenance probes, two of the paraprofessionals implemented the intervention with 100% fidelity, and the third paraprofessional implemented the intervention with higher fidelity than baseline. Results also showed corresponding decreases in child challenging behavior and increases in appropriate communication. Implications for research and practice in supporting paraprofessionals are discussed.

具有强烈行为需要的幼儿通常由辅助专业人员提供服务，这些专业人员通常是学校中训练最少，支持最少的人员之一。虽然特殊教育教师通常无法解决挑战性行为的职业发展机会，但这类职业成长机会通常对准专业人士是完全没有的。这项研究的目的是评估一个计划，在该计划中，教师担任超专业人士的教练。我们使用跨专业和儿童二元组的多基线设计，我们评估了“作为指导的教师”计划对超专业实施保真度和儿童参与挑战性行为和适当沟通的影响。结果表明，在老师的指导下，准专业人员将他们的行为干预实施保真度提高到100％。在维护调查期间，其中两个辅助专业人员以100％的保真度实施干预，而第三个辅助专业人员以高于基准的保真度实施干预。结果还表明，儿童的挑战行为相应减少，而适当的沟通也有所增加。讨论了对支持超专业人士的研究和实践的意义。