2016 Kansas MTSS Symposium
Supporting adults in their implementation of tiered supports: The importance of coaching and feedback
Dr. Melissa Stormont
Overview
Importance of research on early childhood teachers Line of research investigating teachers’ use of behavioral supports Implications Coaching
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Children “At Risk” Environmental Characteristics--School Inappropriate expectations Inappropriate behavior management Poor instruction Lack of cultural responsiveness
Children “At Risk” Interactions Inappropriate
expectations, poor behavior management strategies, and challenging behavior.
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Children “At Risk” According to Hill Walker, if antisocial behavior patterns persist into the fourth grade, the behavior patterns are thought to be so established that they cannot be “cured” but can only be managed with ongoing supports and interventions.
Children “At Risk”
Pianta (1999) states “…by the end of third grade, children’s pathways are fairly set. By the end of third grade, one can predict with a fairly high degree of accuracy how well children will do in their later years” (p. 16).
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School Readiness?
Importance of social skills for school success! Transition to kindergarten review of the literature (Stormont, Beckner, Mitchell, & Richter, 2005)
Social skills perceived to be most important to teachers.
If children are excluded from preschool--how can they “get ready?”
School Readiness?
Professionals need to “get ready” and be responsive. Preschool teachers need to be able to support resilience in children to increase their success in current and future school settings.
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Line of Research
Given the need to increase children’s success in school, we need to start as young as possible. Program-wide systems of positive behavioral support should be established to increase behavioral support for children and adults. Use of coaching has emerged as important!
Line of Research
The studies presented were all related to preschool teachers’ willingness to use and actual use of behavioral supports.
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Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports
Study 1: A survey of early childhood teachers on the importance and feasibility of using behavioral supports (Stormont, Lewis, & Covington, 2005).
Participants: 92 Title One teachers, ECSE teachers, related service providers, instructional aides, and paraprofessionals. 83% response rate. Survey: Included 24 behavioral supports, which were rated on two 7-point Likert scales for importance and feasibility. Survey psychometric data: Content validity, internal consistency.
Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports
Descriptive findings
Teachers rated items positively with the majority falling in the mostly to highly important range.
Teachers did not rate any items as unimportant and two items were rated as somewhat important:
Ignoring minor problems
Using tangibles rewards to support appropriate behavior
Importance and feasibility
The ratings for overall importance and overall feasibility were significantly different, and the magnitude of this difference was large (d = .87).
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Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports
Teacher characteristics and behavioral supports Independent variables included: Education (3 levels), teaching position (3 levels), years of experience (continuous variable). Findings:
Educational level was associated with importance ratings
Teaching position was associated with importance ratings
Graduate level = Undergraduate degree > high school Teacher = related service > Para and instructional aide
No teacher characteristics were related to feasibility Years of experience was not associated with any support category
Implications of Study 1
Preschool professionals have positive opinions, overall, regarding the importance of behavioral supports. Preschool professionals with lower educational levels (even if they have a lot of teaching experience) need more support to understand the importance of using certain behavioral supports.
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Implications of Study 1
Professional development may need to be centered around making supports more feasible to implement or changing expectations if some strategies are too difficult to implement in classroom. Preschool professionals who are related service providers could be utilized for building capacity to increase feasibility.
Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports
Study 2: Observation of Head Start teachers over the course of a year before and after in-services on PW-PBS (Stormont, Covington, & Lewis, 2006). Data were collected on 13 teachers’ use of targeted behavioral supports including specific and nonspecific praise statements, reprimands, precorrective prompts, and directives (all assessed with frequency counts). A total of 147, 15-minute observational sessions; Inter-observer reliability was calculated for 20% of sessions; Overall agreement ranged from .92-.98.
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Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports
Mean rates were calculated for each teacher and compared over the course of the year: Time 1 = before in-service; Time 2 = after in-service; Time 3 = after in-service and technical support. Given lack of experimental control--no functional relationships can be established.
Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports Descriptive and preliminary findings: The mean rate of reprimands at the beginning of the year was 3.13 (per 15-minute observational period). The mean rate at the end of the year was .64. The ratio of praise to reprimands at the beginning was 1: 3. The ratio of praise to reprimands at the end was 2: 1. Directives decreased over the course of the year from 6.44 to 3.23.
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Implications of Study 2
Increasing positive teacher behavior may be more challenging than decreasing negative. Essential to collect data on teachers’ use of key behavioral supports in the classroom given that one-shot PD does not usually generalize back to classroom changes. ODR data is not an outcome measure for preschoolers. This data can be used to target teachers who need more support.
Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports
Study 3: A single subject design across teachers to determine if (1) teachers could increase their use of targeted behavioral supports after a one-on-one“booster session” and (2) student behavior changed as a function of teacher change (Stormont, Smith, & Lewis, in press). Participants included 3 Head Start teachers from Study 2 who had low rates of behavioral specific praise. Targeted behavioral supports included: Precorrection, behavioral specific praise, and reprimands.
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Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports
Reliability data was obtained for both teacher and student behavior. Students overall rates (per minute) of problem behavior were observed in small group via scanning. Multiple baseline design across teachers was used.
Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports
Intervention included: Scripted framework to discuss two key behavioral supports: Precorrection and praise with examples used from natural context. Teachers provided examples of precorrective and praise statements. Another part of intervention was feedback after each subsequent session regarding use of the intervention components.
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Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports
All three teachers increased their use of specific behavioral praise; two of three increased their use of precorrection. Student problem behavior in small group changed after the teachers began using intervention. Findings should be interpreted with caution given small number of participants and the limited intervention data collection between teachers two and three.
Preschool Behavioral Supports-Additional Studies
Covington Smith (2004). Beckner (2007). Kim (2007).
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Implications
Teachers may need different levels of support to implement research based practices. Technical assistance from researcher in this study involved minimal time for intervention (20 minutes). The data-based feedback may have been an integral part of changing teacher behavior. Administrators or PD coordinators could collect this data or have teachers tape-record themselves and monitor their use of targeted variables.
Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports Overall Implications and Connections to Literature: Teachers appear willing to implement research based practices but need support in making the implementation more feasible and/or in generalizing practices learned to their classroom settings. Some teachers need more education on behavioral supports and their importance; this does not appear to be related to years of teaching but rather to educational level.
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Preschool Teachers Use of Behavioral Supports Overall Implications and Connections to Literature: Teachers’ perception of knowledge or of current implementation of research based practice may not be accurate (Noell et al., 2005; Stormont & Stebbins, 2006). Data based feedback appears to be the most powerful tool for changing teacher behavior. Use data based feedback in the form of coaching
Coaching Defined Stormont, Reinke, Newcomer, Marchese, & Lewis, in press “..coaching is defined as a non-evaluative, ongoing process (e.g., occurring over a period of time) in which one individual observes and provides feedback to another individual targeting an intervention, supports or other variables the individual wants to increase in the classroom.”
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Coaching Infrastructure
Need to support building structures to build effective systems to initiate and sustain coaching Resources devoted to the process Resources provided to training Resources provided to support continual implementation of coaching Supports
for coaches
Even
for experienced teachers it is an identity shift (Chval’s work)
Coaching
Important to identify key elements associated with positive outcomes Need to form a cohesive set of elements to guide coaching practices Determine what is essential Currently
performance feedback has been documented to be vital!
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Group Randomized Efficacy Trial Teacher Sample
N=105
(52 intervention, 53 control) 97%
Female 22% African American 1% Asian 1% Hispanic 75% White 1% Other
Student Sample
N= 1818 48%
Female 50% Free or Reduced Lunch 76% African American 2% Hispanic 22% White
Intervention Implementation
3 groups held across three years (n=52 teachers) 6 sessions held over course of year Workshop
1 & 2 in End of October Workshop 3 & 4 in End of November Workshop 5 & 6 in Beginning of January
Teacher rating workshop sessions highly (scale 1-7): information
presented useful (average = 6.75) group discussion useful (average = 6.75 approach was appropriate (average = 6.44) would recommend to other teachers (average = 6.65)
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Teacher Outcome
Research Question: Did teachers in the intervention increase implementation of proactive classroom management strategies as compared to teacher who did not receive the intervention? Analysis: Two-way repeated measures ANOVA
Teacher Use of Proactive Classroom Management
Wilks’s λ = .89, F (3, 97) = 4.22, p < .01, 2 = .12.
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Percent of Observed Proactive Strategies
Teacher Implementation 70
60
50
40
Teacher Implementation of Proactive Strategies
T1
T2
T3
T4
46.76
65.71
66.66
64.35
Wilks’s λ = .41, F(3, 48) = 22.73, p < .001, 2 = .59.
Mean Rates of Intervention Teacher Praise, Precorrection, & Reprimands (n=52) Teacher Behavior
Time 1
Time 2
Time 3
Time 4
Mean (SD)
Mean (SD)
Mean (SD)
Mean (SD)
Praise
0.68 (0.40) 1.23 (0.64) 1.20 (0.63) 1.03 (0.71)
Precorrection
0.02 (0.03) 0.03 (0.04) 0.02 (0.05) 0.02 (0.03)
Reprimand
0.84 (0.53) 0.65 (0.45) 0.61 (0.44) 0.51 (0.34)
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Percent of Observed Proactive Strategies
Use of Proactive Strategies by Performance Feedback Received 100 90 80 70 60 50 Less PF More PF
T2 65.57 65.85
T3 59.14 73.88
T4 59.32 69.19
*Controlling for baseline levels of proactive strategy implementation Wilks’s λ = .86, F(2, 47) = 3.81, p < .05, 2 = .14.
Student Measure
20 minute Direct Observation of Student Behavior Brief Classroom Interaction Observation (BCIO-R; Reinke & Newcomer, 2010) Classroom rate of disruptive behavior (pre-post)
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Observed Disruptive Classroom Behavior by Amount of Performance Feedback Received Rate of Classroom Disruptive Behavior
1.20 1.00 0.80 Less PF More PF
0.60 0.40 0.20 0.00 Pre
Post
Wilks’s λ = 0.92, F(1, 49) = 4.17, p < .05, 2 = .08.
Percent of Observed Proactive Strategies
Use of Proactive Strategies by Total Coaching Received 100 90 80 70 60 50
Less Overall Coaching More Overall Coaching
T2
T3
T4
69.59
66.48
61.43
61.68
66.84
67.40
*Controlling for baseline levels of proactive strategy implementation Wilks’s λ = .86, F(2, 47) = 3.90, p < .05, 2 = .14.
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Observed Disruptive Classroom Behavior by Amount of Coaching Received
Rate of Classroom Disruptive Behaviaor
1.20 1.00 0.80 Less Coaching More Coaching
0.60 0.40 0.20 0.00 Pre
Post
Wilks’s λ = 0.90, F(1, 49) = 5.62, p < .05, 2 = .10.
Questions
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