Responsive Teaching (RT) is a, comprehensive parent-mediated intervention curriculum for children from birth to 6 years of age who have, or are at-risk for, child development and social emotional problems.

RT has been used successfully with children with a wide range of developmental problems or risks including:

• Autism Spectrum Disorders

• Down Syndrome

• Williams Syndrome

• Cerebral Palsy

• Developmental Delays with Unknown Etiologies

• Behavior Disorders

• Infant Mental Health Disorders

• Speech and Language Delays

• Children who are Adopted

• Children from Multi-Risk Families

RT was developed through the auspices of 11 multi year research and model demonstration projects that were awarded to the authors over the past 25 years from the Office of Special Education Programs of the United States Department of Education.

RT has several innovative features that make it ideally suited for contemporary early intervention, parent education, infant mental health and early childhood special education programs:

• Parent-Mediated – RT supports and enhances parents’ role in enhancing their children’s development and well-being. RT can be used as a comprehensive intervention model for program that work primarily with parents and their children or it can be used as the parent intervention component for programs that provide a wide array of services such as classroom or clinical based services.
• Contemporary Child Development Theory – RT procedures derived from research in parent child interaction with. The developmental learning model that RT is based upon is derived from Constructivist theories of cognitive development, Communication theories of language development, and Attachment Theory and other developmental theories of social emotional development.
• Transdisciplinary / Multidisciplinary Service Model - can be used by individuals or multidisciplinary teams including Teachers, Developmental Specialists, Speech Pathologists, Psychologists, Social Workers, Parent Educators, Nurses.

• 66 Responsive Teaching Strategies for addressing children‘s developmental needs
• 16 Pivotal Behavior Intervention Objectives
• More than 130 Discussion Topics for that can be used by professionals to explain the Responsive Teaching rationale
• Objectives Procedures for evaluating children’s progress in acquiring Pivotal Behavioral Objectives
• A flexible planning guide for addressing children’s individualized needs in three Developmental Domains
• A Computerized Responsive teaching Planning and Tracking Program

Research with Responsive Teaching indicates that after one year of weekly RT sessions 50 children with developmental problems, including autism and severe behavior disorders, attained dramatic increases in development:

60% - Cognition
167% - Expressive Language
138% - Receptive language

The 20 children who were diagnosed with autism and other severe behavior disorders also made significant improvement in their social emotional functioning:

21% - Self Regulation
28% - Social Competence
37% - Atypical Behaviors

Responsive Teaching was developed by Gerald Mahoney, Ph.D. and James MacDonald, CCC-SLP, Ph.D.