Improving the Quality of Parent-Teacher Interactions in an Early Childhood Classroom.

Abstract

Quality parent-teacher interactions promote positive relationships and valuable sharing of information (e.g., Endsley and Minish 1991; Ingvarsson and Hanley 2006), outcomes that affect parent satisfaction (Winkelstein 1981) and may also contribute to child development. Supportive relationships between families and educators facilitate child learning and decrease problem behavior (e.g., Fiese etal. 2006). Identifying ways to build positive relationships by promoting quality parent-teacher interactions in early childhood settings is a worthwhile endeavor. Unfortunately, these interactions occur infrequently during natural opportunities, such as morning drop-off in child care centers (Perlman and Fletcher 2012). To address this issue, we taught teachers to initiate quality interactions with parents by using a 12-step task analysis. We developed training procedures that would be easy to implement in a busy child care setting and would be acceptable to teachers who participated in the training. Teachers were undergraduate students who worked in an early childhood classroom as part of a practicum course. We developed a parent-teacher interaction task analysis (Table 1) based on supervisory expectations, licensing requirements, and published research (e.g., Perlman and Fletcher 2012). We measured the accuracy with which teachers implemented the task analysis and asked teachers to complete a questionnaire so that we could assess the acceptability of the training procedures. Table1 Parent-teacher interaction task analysis An organizational-level functional assessment revealed that teachers (1) were unable to describe correctly the behaviors comprising a parent-teacher interaction, and (2) lacked the skills to accurately implement the task analysis (criterion was set to 80 % accuracy across three consecutive observations). After obtaining university approval to conduct the study, we used a concurrent multiple baseline design across shifts to evaluate the effects of training on teacher accuracy. Our analysis consisted of two to four phases depending on teacher performance: (1) baseline, (2) task clarification, (3) video-based training, and (4) feedback. During baseline, teachers experienced typical training offered by the child development center (e.g., reading a manual, orientation, feedback from their supervisor on a variety of behaviors). Teacher accuracy for the morning (M = 66.5 %) and afternoon (M = 58.8 %) shifts was below criterion levels (Fig. 1). Task clarification consisting of a brief review of a written task analysis was ineffective for teachers working the afternoon shift (M = 60.9 %); thus, we did not introduce this intervention for the morning shift. A video-based training package consisting of a 5-min, 4-s video with models, guided notes, and a 5-item quiz increased teacher accuracy for both shifts. The morning shift reached mastery criterion quickly (M = 87 %). Although teachers in the afternoon shift demonstrated increases in accuracy (M = 76.5 %), they achieved criterion performance only when performance feedback was provided (M = 89.2 %). Feedback consisted of a brief meeting during which we presented graphic performance data, reviewed expectations, discussed ways to correct errors, and praised steps performed correctly. Based on the results of a questionnaire, teacher acceptability was high (Table 2). Teachers agreed or strongly agreed with statements that video-based training (M = 3.57) and feedback (M = 4) are acceptable and effective and that they would be willing to use them again in the future. Fig.1 Percentage of task analysis steps implemented accurately by teachers who worked in the afternoon or morning shifts across all phases of the study (note VBT video-based training). The asterisk denotes a single observation during which only four parent-teacher ... Table2 Acceptability ratings The purpose of this study was to improve the quality of parent-teacher interactions by providing easy-to-implement teacher training. Video-based training improved performance for teachers in both shifts. Brief feedback was required for teachers in the afternoon shift to reach criterion performance. An important finding was that teachers reached criterion in less than 20 min of training time. Furthermore, teachers rated both video-based training and feedback the most acceptable and effective training procedures. These results are similar to previous studies documenting that function-based staff-level interventions produced robust changes in behavior (e.g., Carr etal. 2013). Moreover, this study improved upon previous research (e.g., Ingvarsson and Hanley 2006) by addressing more complex aspects of a quality interaction and effectively improved interactions with relatively simple training procedures. These findings have implications for early childhood settings by demonstrating that resource-sensitive training procedures may yield marked performance improvements in ways that are acceptable to teachers. Future research might address how similar training procedures influence behavior of paid employees and have collateral effects on parent satisfaction, parent-teacher relationships, and child development.