Technical Adequacy of the Research Informed Classroom Evaluation: Play Tool for Observing and Evaluating Special Education Teachers’ Play Practices

Existing observation instruments for assessing special education teacher’s practices tend to emphasize broad classroom practices. Although these broad-focused tools allow observers (i.e., administrators) to measure teachers’ performance in most parts of the school day, the questions or indicators may be too broad to capture domain-specific practices. For example, teaching students with developmental disabilities within the context of play may look very different than during whole group instruction. In this study, we evaluate the technical adequacy of the Research Informed Classroom Evaluation – Play (RICE-P) instrument with four classroom interns with a multiple baseline design. Our results indicate consistency in scores when there were no changes in the environment, adequate interrater and test-retest reliability, and sensitivity to performance change (treatment utility). Lastly, interns rated the importance of selected play practices, change in their performance, and the RICE-P tool as socially valid.