Replication of combined school readiness interventions for teachers and parents of head start pre-kindergarteners using remote delivery

Abstract

This replication study examined remote delivery of 2 evidence-based prekindergarten (pre-k) interventions to evaluate whether the combination of interventions, one in Head Start classrooms (online The Early Education Model, eTEEM) and one in the home (online Play and Learning Strategies, ePALS) resulted in enhanced effects on at-risk 3- to 5-year-old children's school readiness skills when compared to either of these interventions alone. The aligned interventions trained adults – teachers and parents – to use responsiveness and guided learning approaches within routine activities with the aim of increasing children's social-behavioral and academic skills. Both the original in-person study (Landry et al., 2017) and the present remote study used a four-group factorial design. The present study first randomized classrooms to eTEEM (n = 36) or control (n = 33). Next, within classrooms, parent-child dyads were randomized to ePALS or No ePALS, resulting in four conditions: n = 186 eTEEM/ePALS; n = 151 eTEEM/No ePALS; n = 160 No eTEEM/ePALS; and n = 133 No eTEEM/No ePALS control. The original study found small to moderate effects on parent and teacher behaviors ( d = 0.18 to 0.55). In this remote study, there were generally larger parent and teacher effects for responsiveness (g = 0.63 to 0.70) and for guided learning ( g = 0.37 to 1.05), behaviors targeted by the interventions. Results of the original study showed few effects on children's academic outcomes and the strongest effect on children's social-behavioral skills for the parent intervention ( d = 0.15 to 0.19). The present study produced similar patterns of results for child outcomes with larger social-behavioral effects ( g = 0.19 to 0.27) than academic ( g = -0.23 to 0.30). We discuss the importance of these replication findings when delivering interventions remotely to improve scalability.