Teachers’ classroom management skills can make the difference between a positive learning environment and one where aggression and bullying lead to academic, behavioral, and mental health problems for children down the road. And teachers feel the strain of a chaotic classroom, too.

But teachers who work with young children often get minimal classroom management training. It’s a missed opportunity, says an Irish team of researchers.

In the first study of its kind, a well-known classroom management training program has showed exciting success. In Irish primary schools, the Incredible Years program improved both general classroom environment and individual student behavior, at a modest cost.

The Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (IY TCM) is designed to strengthen teachers’ skills and improve outcomes for their students. It aims to help teachers develop proactive discipline strategies and positive teacher-student relationships while improving their knowledge about social and emotional regulation skills and positive teacher-parent partnerships.

Designed in the US, IY TCM had never been evaluated with an independent randomized control trial (RCT) in Europe – until now. A research team led by Dr Sinead McGilloway, from the Department of Psychology at the National University of Ireland (NUI), Maynooth, evaluated the effectiveness of the IY TCM program in Irish primary schools. This March, McGilloway presented the short-term results of the evaluation at the Incredible Years 2011 Conference in Cardiff.

The results were encouraging. In the first six months of the trial, IY TCM improved both teachers’ classroom management and students’ behavior. A sub-study shows it may have reduced teachers’ stress levels as well.

Twenty-two teachers and 217 children aged 4 to 7 years from 11 schools in Ireland participated in the main study. They were randomly allocated to either the intervention or the control group. The teachers randomly allocated to the intervention group received five one-day training sessions that included videotape modeling, role plays and discussions. Teachers had the chance to practice new strategies they had learned in a month-long interval between training days, which covered promoting positive behavior and participation, decreasing aggression and setting clear classroom rules. In a smaller qualitative sub-study, one-to-one interviews were conducted with 11 teachers in order to understand teachers’ views and experiences.

Teachers who received training had fewer negative classroom management strategies (fewer harsh and critical statements, fewer negative commands in their interactions with children) than control teachers. Compared to control group teachers, teachers who received the IY TCM program reported that positive classroom strategies like modeling good behavior, using praise and incentives were easy to use and useful for them. Teachers also reported that children receiving the intervention demonstrated significantly better self-regulation and cooperation skills. The children described as most “at risk” (those exhibiting borderline or abnormal levels of behavioral problems) had significantly fewer behavioral difficulties compared to children in the control group.

In the sub-study, the teacher interviews revealed the benefits of the program for teachers in the Irish education system. Teachers not only found the principles of the TCM program effective and easy to implement, but they also found it improved their overall levels of stress, classroom management and home-school collaboration. They also reported a reduction in disruptive behavior in the classroom and an improved classroom environment.

A cost analysis showed that the costs are modest compared with other education-based programs. The estimated cost of delivering the IY TCM program (per teacher) was just over €2,000 ($2,800), and the average cost per child was about €100 ($140).

These findings combined show that the IY TCM program is effective in an Irish primary school context, in improving both child well-being and teachers’ classroom management. As the first independent RCT evaluation of IY TCM in a European context, it reveals what we gain if we use teacher training as an opportunity to improve child outcomes.

Reference
McGilloway, Sinead. “Positive Classrooms, Positive Children: Evaluating the Teacher Classroom Management Programme in Ireland.” Paper presented at the Incredible Years annual conference, Cardiff, Wales, March 9, 2011.