Table 5.
Examples of Precision Teaching
| Example | Features Analysis |
|---|---|
| A professional football player works with a team of experts who help break down the skill sets he wants to improve into component skills with frequency aims. He practices his pinpoints daily, reviews video of his performance, and charts how many of each movement he completed successfully in a fixed timing. He analyzes his progress on the SCC with these experts every few days, and they make recommendations for changes based on the data. His performance in practice improves as a result, and his coach announces he has earned more play time in the next game. |
Critical features: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Variable features: 1a, 2a, 3a, 4a, 5b, 6c, 7a, 8d, 9b |
| A piano teacher uses the SCC to chart the notes played correctly for each of the songs taught to a student. The teacher’s goal is for the student’s progress to follow a x1.4 celeration or above for all of the songs. If any of the charts show slower progress, the teacher spends extra time working on those songs during the lessons and assigns targeted activities for the student to practice when not in lessons. |
Critical features: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Variable features: 1a, 2a, 3d, 4b, 5c, 6c, 7b, 8e, 9c |
| An interdisciplinary team works with a young learner with autism who has been engaging in disruptive behavior during teaching sessions. The team begins by pinpointing the challenging behavior: hear-do swipes materials off the table when asked to “give me” an item. They then conduct a component analysis of the receptive identification task and determine that responding appropriately to a “give me” instruction requires fluency on the tool skills of reach, grasp, place, and release. They pinpoint and target these in isolation for a while, using the SCC within and across sessions to analyze progress and make decisions. Once they meet a few frequency aims on these skills in variable timings (10 movements in a row), they shift to 15-s timings and then to 30-s timings. When they return to the original receptive identification program just 2 weeks later, they observe quicker acquisition of targets and a deceleration of the challenging behavior. |
Critical features: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Variable features: 1a, 2b, 3a, 4b, 5a, 6c, 7b, 8c, 9a |
| A teenage girl with mild depressive symptoms collects daily data on the frequency of the pinpoint (thinks positive thought about self) and on the latency of the pinpoint (hear-do steps feet on the floor after alarm). She sets aims for where she wants to be with each of these pinpoints. She comes up with her own interventions based on her hypotheses about what might work, and she uses the SCC to evaluate the effects of each new thing she tries. When she meets with her therapist, they review her charts and decide what to do next. |
Critical features: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Variable Features: 1a–b, 2a, 3d, 4a, 5b, 6a, 7a, 8f, 9b |
| A job coach works with an adult who has struggled to get a job. After discussing some of the things that had previously gone wrong in the application process and interviews, she creates a road map of skills to develop for better interviewing. During her weekly sessions with her client, they work together on the following pinpoints in fixed timings, which they chart on the SCC and discuss together: (a) free-says reason to hire me, (b) free-says skill I possess for the job, and (c) free-do folds hands during a mock interview. Based on the charted frequency and duration data, they make decisions about next steps, and the coach assigns “homework” to her client related to uncovering more about himself that might be good to mention during a job interview. |
Critical features: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Variable features: 1c, 2a, 3d, 4b, 5c, 6c, 7a, 8f, 9b |