By

Nargiza Buranova, Ph.D.

Shannon Locke, MS, CCC-SLP

Janine Stichter, Ph.D.

University of Missouri

This issue of NASET’s Autism Spectrum Disorder Series was written by Nargiza Buranova, Ph.D., Shannon Locke, MS, CCC-SLP, and Janine Stichter, Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. Social competency is an area of skill development that is difficult to assess clearly or consistently, particularly for students with average or above cognitive abilities including students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Few tools are available to educators that provide the necessary sensitivity to performance useful for progress monitoring. Progress monitoring is a necessary component required to fully execute multitiered systems of support (MTSS; Utley & Obiakor, 2015) and to evaluate the effectiveness of ongoing instruction. However, there are few defensible, appropriate, or usable measures for educators to assess social competence repeatedly to demonstrate incremental progress (Brann et al., 2022; Briesch et al., 2020). The focus of this issue of NASET’s Autism Spectrum Disorder Series is to describe how practitioners can model and use strategies individualized to their students, to systematically guide and regularly monitor student progress through direct observation and engagement across multiple skills of social competence (conversational reciprocity, affect recognition, recognizing and demonstrating emotional states, and social problem solving).

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