Effects of Home-Based Coaching on Mother’s Use of Milieu Teaching Strategies and Child Outcomes

Abstract

Acquiring language and communication skills during early years of life is very important for children to continue their lives independently. To eliminate or alleviate the adverse effects of delays in these areas, early intervention programs that include evidence-based practices focused on improving children’s language and communication skills should be offered as early as possible. For early intervention programs to reach the targeted child outcomes, evidence-based practices must be implemented with high fidelity. The purpose of this study was to examine impact of a parent training program consisted of training sessions followed by home-based coaching on a parent’s use of Milieu Teaching (MT) strategies with fidelity during typical home activities or routines. The relationships between parent’s use of MT strategies and her child’s expressive language skills were also investigated. A mother and her child with speech and language impairment participated in the study. A multiple baseline design across behaviors single-case experimental design was used. The findings show that the parent training program that included training sessions followed by home-based coaching support is effective in supporting mother’s skill acquisition, maintenance, and generalization in relation to MT strategies. In addition, the findings show that the mother’s use of MT strategies with high fidelity was associated with increases in her child’s expressive language skills including the mean length of utterance, the number of different words, and the total number of words used. The study’s findings were discussed based on the literature, and suggestions for further research were presented. © (2024), (T.C. Milli Egitim Bakanligi). All rights reserved.