SCHOOL KT PROJECT

Knowledge Translation for Teachers of Individuals with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities and Health-Related Challenging Behaviours

Children and young adults with developmental disabilities sometimes engage in challenging behaviours that present serious risks to themselves and others. Classroom teachers and other service providers need up-to-date and unbiased research findings about effective approaches to these behaviours, but often this information is neither easily accessible nor user-friendly.

We assembled a research team consisting of classroom teachers, established researchers, and researchers in training to find and summarize the relevant literature and put together a package of practical information for teachers that will ultimately improve the well-being of students.

Purpose: Researchers and teachers are partnering to develop and evaluate a process to translate sound scientific knowledge – to make the information user-friendly, easily accessible, and available to teachers and related professionals.

Through this knowledge translation process, we received requests for information about managing severe challenging behaviours, conducted systematic reviews of research findings, are preparing evidence-based practical recommendations, and plan to share those recommendations to promote uptake. We will evaluate every step of the process, using mixed methods, and improve the knowledge translation process based on the results.

The research team is divided into four working groups, each tasked with finding the answers to four key questions.

Click here to read these key questions.

Research Sponsor: This project is supported by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (FRN: KAL-104248).

Affiliations: This project is a collaboration of team members from St.Amant School, St.Amant Research Centre, University of Manitoba (UM) Department of Psychology, UM Faculty of Human Ecology – Department of Family Social Science, UM Faculty of Nursing, UM Libraries.