There has been a dramatic increase in the number of children diagnosed on the autism spectrum both nationally and internationally (Presmanes Hill, Zuckerman, Fombonne, 2014). The acquisition of social communication abilities is a major difficulty faced by children on the autism spectrum (Wetherby, Prizant, & Schuler, 2000). Challenges include, attending to others, initiating and responding to social interactions and using and responding to verbal and non-verbal communication (Charman et al. 2003; Kasari, Freeman & Paparella, 2006; Leekam, Lopez and Moore, 2000; Leekam and  Ramsden, 2006; Mundy, Sigman, & Kasari, 1990; Wetherby, Yonclas, & Bryan, 1989; Wetherby et al., 2000). Research has shown the positive impact of training parents in facilitative interaction strategies in supporting the development of the social communication abilities of their children on the AS (Bogdashina, 2005; Charman and Stone, 2006; Prizant et al, 2006; Siller and Sigman, 2002), particularly for children who are more limited in their ability to respond to or initiate joint attention (Wetherby, in Charman and Stone, 2006). However, there is a paucity of research exploring the impact of enhancing teachers and school support staffs’ knowledge of such strategies. This study was motivated by oral reports from teachers within autism specific classes in Irish primary schools. They spoke of their great difficulty teaching certain children, citing as reasons; the students’ reluctance to attend to them, to interact with them and the students’ lack of clear communication. This group of children are often the neglected end of the spectrum (Kau, 2014). Research demonstrates that better-quality staff-child interactions facilitate better learning outcomes (Englert & Rozendal, 2004; Fuchs & Fuchs, 2001; Heckman, 2000; Shin et al., 2009). The purpose of this multiple case study is to describe the impact on the social communication behaviours of five teachers, five SNAs and five children with ASD when the adults participated in a Professional Development Initiative that focused on strategies known to enhance social communication abilities of children on the AS.

The research questions include

1. Does continuing professional development in communication-promoting strategies have a discernible impact on the interactive style of classroom adults?
2. What are the effects on the social communication skills of developmentally young children on the Autism Spectrum when their classroom staff participated in a communication–promoting professional development initiative?

As its theoretical framework, this study adopted the transactional model of communication development (Sameroff and Chandler, 1975; Sameroff and Fiese, 2000).This model accepts that a child’s social and communication development is influenced by reciprocal and bidirectional transactions occurring between the child and the adults in his/her environment. Both the adult and the child play a part on how successful the exchanges are, “…this model assumes that the increasing readability or clarity of the child's communicative behavior may influence the parent's style and frequency of contingent responsiveness in ways that will further scaffold the child's developing competence during the transition to linguistic communication”  (Wetherby, Warren, & Reichle, 1998, p. 2).The transactional model recognises the child’s biological make up and the adult’s ability to scaffold the child as critical elements that influence the exchanges required for the child’s development The objective of the PD was to enhance the adults’ knowledge and use of communication promoting strategies with the expectation that the social communication abilities of their student would improve.

This paper reports on the cross-case and some individual case findings in relation to the implementation of the communication-promoting strategies by the adults and student outcomes relating to their initiations, attention to the adults and frequency and length of adult-child interaction. 

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