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Peer-Mediated Social Skills Training

Peer-mediated approaches, where peers are also trained as facilitators for social skill instruction, like the TRACKS program, is an essential method to facilitate social skill instruction.  

The approach is an evidence-based social skills instructional method that has shown to be effective for teaching social skills to young children and adolescents on the autism spectrum (Steinbrenner et al., 2020). Additional research has also shown it is effective with preschool children and school-age children with various intellectual and developmental disabilities (Carter et al., 2010).  

The peer-mediated approach to teaching social skills is composed of three components:
  1. The peers being trained to be facilitators (TRACKS skills)
  2. Social skill instruction
  3. Prompting peers to coach the target student to demonstrate the skill

Peer-Mediated Approach

This approach highlights that peers are trained as facilitators in teaching age-appropriate social skills. 

Adult-Mediated Approach

This traditional approach, focuses on teaching the child social skills directly and then assisting them to generalize with peers. 

TRACKS

TRACKS is a peer-mediated social skills training program to support adult leaders to teach typically developing children the skills to be better friends to their peers with disabilities and social challenges, in order to create an environment where all children are included and are meaningful participants.

Children are taught skills to include others and facilitate social skill instruction by using  a child friendly acronym:
  • Try Again (Persistence)
  • Right Thing (Correcting)
  • Assist (Prompting)
  • Congratulate (Reinforcement)
  • Keep Trying (Persistence)
  • Show (Modeling) 

Camps on TRACKS

Camps on TRACKS is a peer-mediated approach designed for recreational settings and summer camps. The activities for peer training are adapted for the recreational setting.
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Schools on TRACKS

Schools on TRACKS is a peer-mediated approach designed for school settings. The activities and peer trainings are adapted for the school setting.
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Stay, Play, & Talk

Taken from the well-known, evidence-based program, Buddy Skills (English et al., 1997), the program provides lesson plans and accompanying materials to run the program in a Early Years and Kindergarten setting with preschool-age children.
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