Everyday Activities As A Context for Learning

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Everyday Activities As A Context for Learning
Development
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Childrens experiences in everyday settings and
activities begin in Early Intervention. The
relationships that providers form with children
families ---the ways they guide and support
families in parenting children with disabilities
-- sets the stage for the childs and familys
lifetime experiences.
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Everyday Activities As A Context for Learning
DevelopmentLearning Outcomes

• Responsibility for knowing contributing to
  evidence
• Effective use of evidence to provide information
  determine intervention

• Use of systematic approaches to adapt and
  intervene within everyday routines, activities,
  places
• Use of reflective data as a source for
  decision-making problem-solving

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Evidence-Based Practice

• Base what you do on available evidence
• What types of evidence exist for a particular
  issue?
• Research studies
• Clinical studies
• Clinical personal experiences
• Word of Mouth
• Provide families (clients) with information about
  all possible treatment options, including the
  potential benefits liabilities of each
• Allow families (clients) to make informed
  decisions about what they see as best for their
  children family circumstances

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10 Things We Know from Research

• Infants and toddlers learn and develop best when
  provided with nurturing relationships with a
  minimal number of caregivers.
• Most learning is not the result of targeted
  goals -- children learn a great deal incidentally
  -- from watching, doing, experimenting,
  listening, and feeling.
• There is more research about childrens learning
  within the context of educational/group-based
  activities than within context of activities that
  occur in home and community settings.
• Instruction therapy can be provided
  successfully when strategies -- adaptation
  intervention -- are embedded within
  naturally-occurring activities and routines in
  educational or child care settings.
• Parent(s) of young children with disabilities
  value inclusion of their children to a greater
  degree than do professionals.

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• Approaches such as Motor Learning show that
  practice facilitates motor skill competence.
  Providing multiple trials (opportunities) for
  practice that are distributed (or spaced)
  throughout the day is more effective than
  providing massed practice opportunities.
• Children (and adults) learn faster when motivated
  to do so.
• Skill learning is easier and more rapid when done
  within the context where the skills will be used
  (rather than under contrived circumstances).
• Both parents and generic community program
  personnel report that children with disabilities
  make learning and developmental gains in natural
  settings.
• Expectations set the stage for learning --
  expectations are both culturally experientially
  based.

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How can we put square pegs in round holes
-- (without being turned upside down)?
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RETROFIT!!!

• Work with families from their point of strength
• Dont forget that adaptations are a form of
  intervention
• Think of limitations -- not as roadblocks --but
  as challenges to be taken on by creativity,
  reflection problem-solving

• Take the purpose concept of what we know fit
  it into the routines activities of various
  places
• Work from a top-down perspective
• Build on childrens strengths abilities

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Steps

• Find out where families spend time and what they
  do
• Figure out what activities and routines are going
  well and which are not going well
• Use a top-down process to merge outcomes with
  activities/routines
• Identify Strengths (Environmental Child)

• Identify Interferers
• Think About What Children Will Learn
• Use an Activity Framework
• Develop Adaptations
• Develop Interventions
• Embed Interventions into Everyday Activities
  Routines

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What is happening in families lives? What is
going well -- or not so well? Where and HOW have
they been successful? What else would families
like to be doing? What did they do before the
child was born that they are not able to do
now? What situations are they uncomfortable with
and WHY?
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