The Irie Classroom Toolbox: developing a violence prevention, preschool teacher training program using evidence, theory, and practice

Abstract

In this paper, I describe the development of the Irie Classroom Toolbox, a school-based violence prevention, teacher training program for use with children aged 3-6 years. In-depth interviews were conducted with Jamaican preschool teachers, who had participated in a trial of a classroom behavior management program, at posttest (n = 35) and 5 years later (n = 20). An on-going process evaluation was also conducted. Teachers' preferred behavior management strategies and training methods were documented, and enablers and barriers to implementation were identified. Teachers were most likely to adopt strategies that they liked, found easy to use, and were effective. These included paying attention to positive behavior and explicitly teaching children the expected behavior. Teachers preferred active, hands-on training strategies based on social-cognitive theories. Enablers to intervention implementation included positive teacher-facilitator relationships, choice, collaborative problem solving, teachers recognizing benefits of the intervention, group support, and provision of materials. Barriers to intervention implementation were also identified. These data were integrated with behavior change theory (i.e., the behavior change wheel and theoretical domains framework) to develop an intervention grounded in common core elements of evidence-based programs while also utilizing teachers' perspectives. The resulting program is a low cost, adaptable intervention that should be suitable for training preschool teachers in other low-resource settings.

Design and Implementation of the Irie Homes Toolbox: A Violence Prevention, Early Childhood, Parenting Program

“…We also prioritized relevant content and process components from the Irie Classroom Toolbox as these components (1) have proven effectiveness in the Jamaican setting, and (2) are used by the preschool teachers who will ultimately deliver the intervention to parents. The content used most and most liked by teachers included paying attention to positive behavior, explicitly teaching the expected behavior, giving clear instructions, and interactive reading (21). The training methods most valued by teachers included rehearsal and practice, giving positive and supportive feedback, ensuring teachers recognized the benefits of the intervention to the children and to themselves, group support, provision of necessary materials to implement the intervention, and making sessions fun (21).…”

“…The content used most and most liked by teachers included paying attention to positive behavior, explicitly teaching the expected behavior, giving clear instructions, and interactive reading (21). The training methods most valued by teachers included rehearsal and practice, giving positive and supportive feedback, ensuring teachers recognized the benefits of the intervention to the children and to themselves, group support, provision of necessary materials to implement the intervention, and making sessions fun (21). Table 2 outlines how the parent interview responses were used in intervention development to ensure the program was acceptable, relevant, and feasible for the Jamaican cultural context.…”

“…There are three broad categories in the literature for the development of behavior change interventions that involve: (1) transporting an existing evidence-based program for use in a new cultural and/or economic context [for example, (49)], (2) developing an intervention specific for the context [for example, (21,36)], and/or (3) learning while growing which involves continually improving an existing intervention [for example, (50)]. For the development of the Irie Homes Toolbox, we developed a context-specific intervention while also learning while growing through iterative cycles of design, implementation, and evaluation with the results being used to continually improve the intervention.…”

“…Fourthly, an intervention that has been developed in the context with participation from local stakeholders is likely to be more acceptable to participants, practitioners, and policy-makers. These factors suggest that transporting evidence-based principles and operationalising those principles for the setting may lead to an intervention that is more scalable and sustainable for that particular context (21).…”

“…Training Jamaican preschool teachers in appropriate discipline techniques has shown benefits to teachers' child behavior management practices (20). We have developed a teachertraining, violence prevention program, the Irie Classroom Toolbox, to prevent violence against children (21). The Irie Classroom Toolbox has been evaluated with preschool and grade one primary school teachers and has shown large reductions to teachers' use of violence against children (22,23).…”