Supporting Socialization Skills of Preschoolers with Developmental Delays in Inclusive Education: An Early-Career Teacher’s Implementation of Curriculum Modifications

Abstract

This practitioner action research examined how an early-career preschool teacher implemented Building Blocks–informed curriculum modifications to support the socialisation-related IEP goals of two children with developmental delays in an inclusive public preschool in Taiwan. Classroom implementation lasted three months, followed by a parent interview. Iterative thematic analysis identified three phases: initial reliance on adult support amid classroom instability and co-teaching tensions; diversification to environmental, peer, activity-simplification, preference-based, and invisible supports; and increasingly adaptive but inconsistent implementation. Outcomes differed across the two children. Xin showed gradual increases in communication and peer participation, whereas Ke showed partial gains in routines and turn-taking but limited or inconsistent evidence of progress towards three socialisation-related IEP goals. Uneven co-teaching implementation emerged as a possible contextual factor associated with variability in Ke’s outcomes. Findings suggest a provisional, practice-derived process framework comprising classroom readiness, strategy diversification, ongoing monitoring, and support calibration or fading, with co-teaching coherence and child–strategy–activity fit shaping implementation. Embedding IEP goals in everyday routines may support inclusive participation when modifications are flexibly matched to children’s needs, monitored through ongoing data, and implemented consistently. The framework emphasises that curriculum modifications are context-sensitive supports requiring collaborative decision making and adjustment rather than techniques with uniform effects.