Eric.ed.gov – Intensive Intervention Practice Guide: System of Least Prompts

The National Center for Leadership in Intensive Intervention (NCLII), a consortium funded by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), prepares special education leaders to become experts in research on intensive intervention for students with disabilities who have persistent and severe academic (e.g., reading and math) and behavioral difficulties. By the end of the first year of their program, scholars in each cohort work in cross-institutional collaborative groups to create an Intensive Intervention Practice Guide. In each guide, scholars identify an approach to intensive intervention for a select population of students with disabilities, describe the existing evidence base behind it, and discuss the next steps in research needed to improve the understanding of designing and delivering the intervention. The “Intensive Intervention Practice Guides” are created for practitioners as well as faculty engaged in instructing pre- and in-service teachers. In this practice guide, the authors investigate the system of least prompts (SLP), which is also referred to as least-to-most “prompting” and increasing assistance (Neitzel & Wolery 2009). SLP is a systematic prompting procedure in which an instructor provides increasing assistance to an individual until they provide the intended response. SLP can be used to teach behaviors that are discrete (e.g., raising a hand or pointing to a picture) and those that are “chained” (e.g., hand washing or putting on pants). Specifically, it is often used to teach functional skills to children and adults with significant disabilities. To illustrate this process, the authors use the example of teaching a child to request an item using a communication device. This practice guide provides a list of resources for learning more about the system of least prompts.