ABSTRACT
School psychologists and other educational professionals are now, more than ever, documenting educational outcomes, as legislation requires schools to monitor academic progress to ensure students are meeting specific learning objectives. This chapter presents a template for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions or instructional approaches. First, an idiographic (i.e., single case design methodology) perspective on evaluating change highlighting experimental control, repeated measurements of the target behavior, verification and replication, and collection of baseline data is presented. Second, commonly used single case experimental designs (SCED) are introduced, emphasizing advantages and limitations. In addition, the chapter offers examples of how these different designs might be used in school settings with common academic and behavior problems. Finally, important considerations when using SCED to evaluate the effectiveness of educational practice are discussed. Traditional research designs (i.e., group designs) found in education and psychology are hardly appropriate when evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention for a single student.
