DIR 203 Learning Objectives

DIR 203 is focused on coaching caregivers, teachers, and/or other care providers to promote functional emotional developmental capacities. 

Following successful completion of DIR® 203:

Big Picture Thinking

• Correctly explain the central ideas of FEDC's 1 - 16 of the DIRFloortime Model.

• Correctly explain advanced, discipline-specific concepts related to sensory reactivity, processing and motor planning development, receptive and expressive language development, and visual spatial development as they relate to all the FEDCs.  

• Identify and embrace caregivers' and individuals' strengths, respecting and promoting their right for self-determination.

• Demonstrate an understanding of how DIRFloortime can be learned through coaching by caregivers and others that are not formally training in DIRFloortime.  

Assessment & Developing Individual Profiles

• Describe the range of an individual's capacity for all of the FEDCs in child or adults individuals, with or without developmental special needs. 

• Apply in-depth and advanced, discipline specific concepts learned in DIR 201 and DIR 202, analyzing how individual differences of children or adults can interfere or help promote the development of the first nine functional emotional developmental capacities.

• Assess “goodness of fit” styles that can better support development, based on different caregiver and child individual profiles and family cultural differences.

• Explain how other interventions that the family might choose could be integrated, when beneficial to the child, into the home and school program using DIR® as the guiding developmental framework.

Practice: Floortime

• Demonstrate integration and application of DIR concepts through Floortime competencies by attunement of one’s own affect to the caregiver and thereby supporting the caregiver to promote the functional emotional development of the child or person in their care.

• Demonstrate following the caregiver's lead (based on their internal intentions, motivations and purposes) and an ability to coach the caregiver to follow the lead of their child or person in their care.  

• Demonstrate specific Floortime coaching strategies that helps the caregiver promote the development of FEDCs in their child or person they are caring for while accounting for individual differences.

• Demonstrates an ability to coach caregivers on how to use Floortime as a developmental approach by utilizing Floortime to promote the development of the FEDCs rather than to control behavior or maintain compliance.

Reflective Practice & Professional Identity

• Show awareness of one’s own individual differences and functional emotional developmental capacities, including preferred interactive styles and tendencies under stress (i.e., what helps you stay regulated), and how this affects your ability to coach caregivers.

• Use personal reflection (triggered by observation, group discussions, personal evaluation, readings and lectures, supervision, and more) to continually adjust and enhance one’s understanding of the DIRFloortime Model and its application to one’s work in coaching caregivers.

• Display high ethical behaviors and standards of practice, including adherence to confidentiality requirements and informed consent, as well as demonstrating an understanding of the limits of one’s scope of practice in coaching caregivers.

• Demonstrates an ability to integrate feedback and learning into DIRFloortime coaching practice in a meaningful manner that shows an understanding of the underlying concepts and rationale beyond simple techniques and strategies.