The Task Demonstration Model: a concurrent model for teaching groups of students with severe disabilities

This study investigated the use of the Task Demonstration Model (TDM) of group instruction for students with severe or moderate retardation. This model and the Standard Prompting Hierarchy (SPH) were tested against each other (and baseline) across three teachers and groups of students. Results on teacher variables showed that demands and praise were roughly equivalent for both procedures, but prompts were 12 times higher in SPH than in TDM. Data on student variables showed task engagement to be the same for SPH and TDM, percent correct to be 10% higher in TDM, but rate correct to be twice as much in TDM as in SPH.