Teacher Acceptance of Psychological Interventions of Varying Theoretical Orientation

Abstract

Acceptability to the client plays an important role in adherence to psychological interventions for atypical children. Previous research has established that teacher acceptance of psychological treatments varies as a function of the severity of the target problem, the time needed to implement the intervention and several other factors. The major objective of the current research was to expand the number and theoretical diversity of treatments surveyed. Three social learning methods (coaching, modeling and problem solving) were compared with two behavior modification techniques (time out and token reinforcement) and three traditional clinical treatments (family therapy, pharmacotherapy and play therapy), using the Treatment Evaluation Inventory (Kazdin, 1980a). Subjects were ten male and forty-three female regular and special education teachers from the Ottawa area. Participants listened to an audiocassette on which one of two hypothetical cases was described (either a withdrawn or an aggressive child), followed by a second cassette on which either seven (withdrawn child) or eight (aggressive child) possible interventions were suggested. Repeated measures ANOVAs indicated that teachers preferred family therapy over all other forms of intervention, and that pharmacotherapy was rated as the least acceptable. Teacher assignment, type of disorder and teachers' gender were also found to influence acceptability ratings.