EFFECTS OF SCHEMA-BASED INSTRUCTION DELIVERED THROUGH COMPUTER-BASED VIDEO INSTRUCTION ON MATHEMATICAL WORD PROBLEM SOLVING OF STUDENTS WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER AND MODERATE INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY

The Common Core State Standards initiative calls for all students to be college and career ready with 21st century skills by high school graduation, yet the question remains how to prepare students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and moderate intellectual disability (ID) with higher order mathematical concepts. Mathematical problem solving is a critical, higher order skill that students need to have in order to solve real-world problems, but there is currently limited research on teaching problem solving to students with ASD and moderate ID. This study investigated the effects of schema- based instruction (SBI) delivered through computer-based video instruction (CBVI) on the acquisition of mathematical problem solving skills, as well as the ability to discriminate problem type, to three elementary-aged students with ASD and moderate ID using a single-case multiple probe across participants design. The study also examined participant’s ability to generalize skills to a paper-and-pencil format. Results showed a functional relation between SBI delivered through CBVI and the participants’ mathematical word problem solving skills, ability to discriminate problem type, and generalization to novel problems in paper-and-pencil format. The findings of this study provide several implications for practice for using CBVI to teach higher order mathematical content to students with ASD and moderate ID, and offers suggestions for future research in this area