Individual Factors Associated With Professional Development Training Outcomes of the Head Start REDI Program

Abstract

This study examined factors associated with process and content outcomes of the training provided in the context of Head Start REDI (Research based Developmentally-informed), a preschool curriculum designed to enhance the quality of interactions (social-emotional and languageliteracy) between teachers and children. REDI professional development included 4 days of training and weekly coaching. Data for 22 intervention teaching pairs (N = 44) were used in the study. With the exception of years of education and emotional exhaustion, distal teacher factors (i.e., professional characteristics, personal resources and perceptions of the work environment) were unrelated to end-of-year implementation fidelity while openness to consultation showed a significant association. The findings emphasize the importance of teacher engagement in the training process for program effectiveness.Emphasis on the need for evidence-based programs has grown from both the research and policy perspectives as the demands for accountability of children's academic outcomes intensifies. The passage of No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (No Child Left Behind, 2002 and the Good Start, Grow Smart (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2007) initiatives, combined with the expanding literature regarding effective interventions, has extended the emphasis on evidence-based interventions downward from elementary education to early childhood and brought it to the forefront as a potential way to improve Head Start (Lopez, Tartullo, Forness, & Boyce, 2000; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [USDHHS], 2003;Yoshikawa & Knitzer, 1997). If Head Start is to improve children's social-emotional and cognitive development, as well as prevent early problem behaviors, more research is needed to ensure that community programs are able to implement evidencebased interventions with quality.Recent theory and empirical research underscores that the repeated interactions children have with teachers in the preschool setting are the critical process through which they develop the cognitive, behavioral, and social-emotional skills needed to enter school ready to learn NICHD Early Child Care Research Network [ECCRN] 2002Pianta, 2003; Pianta, Hamre, & Stuhlman, 2002;Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Consequently, teachers' instructional practices and relationships with students have become Address correspondence to: Celene Domitrovich, The Pennsylvania State University, Prevention Research Center, 109 South Henderson Building, University Park, PA, 16801; cxd130@psu.edu. HHS Public AccessAuthor manuscript Early Educ Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 25. Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript important indicators of early childhood program quality (Mashburn & Pianta, 2006;Pianta, 2003;Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; Vandell & Wolfe, 2000) and are a main focus of many evidence-based interventions. Given these trends, professional development efforts increasingly involve teachers learning specific instructional and relational pr...

Factors Associated with Head Start Staff Participation in Classroom-Based Professional Development

“…We also hypothesized that positive judgments about the ways in which staff were involved in training would be related to staff active engagement in the training and use of the classroom practices constituting the focus of training. We expected, based on previous research, that staff with more years of formal education would report more positive benefits from the training (Domitrovich et al, 2009;Livneh & Livneh, 1999). The need for the types of analyses described in this paper is based on the fact that "early childhood teachers' motivation for professional development remains virtually unexplored" (Wagner & French, 2010, p. 154).…”

“…Both research and experience, however, indicate that early childhood professionals' participation in training, including Head Start staff, more often than not is quite varied (e.g., Domitrovich, Gest, Sukhdeep, Jones, & DeRousie, 2009;Downer, Locasale-Crouch, Hamre, & Pianta, 2009;Ellis, 1998;Livneh & Livneh, 1999;Torquati, Raikes, & Huddleston-Casas, 2007;. The purposes of the analyses described in this paper were to (a) identify factors associated with Head Start staff's active participation in training to promote their adoption and use of two different types of evidence-based classroom practices and (b) determine which variables, if any, covaried with the predictors of active staff participation in and the perceived benefits of the training.…”

Promoting Language and Literacy Development for Early Childhood Educators: A Mixed-Methods Study of Coursework and Coaching

“…These and other studies (Domitrovich, Gest, Gill, Jones, & DeRousie, 2009;Landry, Swank, Smith, Assel, & Gunnewig, 2006) have recognized that effective professional development is specific and targeted, involving many opportunities for practice with feedback in the context of one"s own practice. It provides teachers with adequate time to reflect on their own practices, to set goals, and to self-evaluate.…”

Adapting for Scalability: Automating the Video Assessment of Instructional Learning

“…In teacher education, a variety of professional development programs for teachers have focused on training teachers to engage in positive interactions with children (Bierman et al, 2008;Domitrovich et al, 2009;Pianta, Mashburn, et al, 2008). However, such large-scale interventions pose challenges to assessment, especially the assessment of more complex open-ended responses.…”

“…Teacher-child interactions have been consistently implicated as a means of promoting positive development in children (Burchinal et al, 2008;Thomason & LaParo, 2009;Yoshikawa et al, 2013). Subsequently, professional development has increasingly focused on training teachers to engage in positive interactions with children (Bierman, Nix, Greenberg, Blair, & Domitrovich, 2008;Domitrovich, Gest, Gill, Jones, & DeRousie, 2009;Pianta, Mashburn, Downer, Hamre, & Justice, 2008).…”