What Is An Ecological Assessment?

The goal for children with ASD is to be able to participate to the fullest extent possible, in natural environments with other children. To help ensure that the child is successful, educators must have an astute understanding of what is occurring in the environment and what skills the child needs to participate effectively. Often educators attempt to teach a child with ASD a series of social skills without actually observing how other children perform the skill. If you observe a group of children playing with trucks on the floor and watch how another child joins in, it is often different than the way many instructors try to teach the skill to a child with ASD. Specifically, a child with ASD may be directed to go over and ask if he can play. In reality, this is not an effective means for entering a social group. Typically, the response to this question is “No” or his peers simply ignore the child. The teacher would be able to develop a better approach for the child by learning how other children enter that play activity in that specific environment. Typically in this situation a child enters by beginning to play next to the child in a way that is inviting. It is also important to know how they are playing with the trucks to ensure that the child can perform the necessary actions/skills. These skills can be identified through an ecological assessment.

Briefly, an ecological assessment is a format designed to delineate how the child without a disability performs an activity in a given environment. To complete an ecological assessment the assessor observes and records the activity as it occurs. Four critical components make up an ecological assessments:

• identification of behaviors or skills being performed, referred to as an ecological inventory
• identification of natural cues and correction procedures
• identification of performance criteria
• completion of the student repertoire inventory, which evaluates the ability of the individual with ASD to perform the skills identified in the ecological inventory.

Once the ecological assessment is completed, it is used as the foundation for developing meaningful goals and designing an instructional plan.

Using ecological assessments to analyze social skills enables instructors to look at both the skill being performed and the language/social skills naturally integrated in the activity. If a child cannot perform the activity, it will not be effective to use this as an opportunity for teaching social skills. An ecological assessment provides information for the team to utilize in making programmatic decisions.