Tutorial: Teaching with Fidelity
Think QuAD: A Free-Range Therapist’s Guide to Fidelity and Social Thinking
You have choices. As a therapist, clinician, educator, or parent you are—for the most part—free to select the materials and curricula you use in your everyday practice or home. You are likely to take the time to select tools that “fit” the needs of the individual. But using those materials in the “real world” in the manner they were designed is the big challenge.
Join Pamela Crooke, PhD, CCC-SLP, Chief Curriculum Officer, as she offers a short tutorial in what to consider when teaching components of the Social Thinking Methodology with fidelity. She explores the idea of QuAD (Quality, Accuracy and Dosage), as well as using fidelity checklists to ensure we’re all using the materials from the Social Thinking Methodology in the manner they were intended.
For years, we’ve attempted to help people understand how to use our materials through free articles on the Social Thinking website, our trainings, and our conferences. However, even these dedicated efforts fall short of really getting to the heart of teaching our materials with fidelity.
If you are familiar with our work, then you know we love acronyms. Why not? They function to kick-start our brains to think and remember important information. So, the acronym QuAD is a way for all of us to start thinking more deeply about fidelity. QuAD stands for the following three key areas of fidelity. For a quick tutorial on these three areas and how they relate to the key elements of each book, check out the video below.
Quality (How well you do it)
Accuracy (What you do)
Dosage (How much - how long)
Of course, for you to use our materials with fidelity, you need the guidelines in an easy-to-use single page format. We’ve been a little slow in getting these fidelity (implementation) checklists to you, but we are systematically adding one to the inside front cover of all our curriculum books. Currently, we have checklists for We Thinkers! (Vol. 1 and 2) curriculum books, We Thinkers! Vol. 2 Group Collaborative Play and Problem Solving Scale (GPS), and the Superflex curriculum. If you already own these products, you can download the fidelity checklists below. We have also added checklists for the Zones of Regulation, Superflex Takes on Braineater, Superflex Takes On One-Sided Sid, Un-Wonderer , and Social Situation Mapping. Each fidelity checklist is meant to help you understand the way we intended these materials to be used and all were developed in a “real world” setting.
Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the delicate balance between teaching with fidelity (how we want you to use the materials/tools) and the needs of the actual child or client with whom you are working. Our hope is that we’ve developed these checklists in a common-sense manner that will allow you to consider both. So, as Social Thinking focuses on fidelity, we are asking you to join us and Think QuAD.
