Award Date

Spring 2010

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (Ded)

Department

Special Education

Advisor 1

Jeffery Gelfer, Committee Co-chair

First Committee Member

Susan Miller, Committee Co-chair

Second Committee Member

David Grant

Graduate Faculty Representative

Richard Tandy

Number of Pages

126

Abstract

There is an increased need for quality in the field of early care and education and, teachers interactions with his or her students are the catalyst for providing and ensuring quality within early childhood environments (La Paro, Pianta, & Hamre, 2008). The study examined the effect of training and consultation on Head Start teacher and child interactions as measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, also known as the CLASS.

Twenty-one Head Start teachers located in Southern Nevada served as participants in the study where non-threatening and evidence based training and consultation was provided over six weeks. Trainings were provided to participants once a week where they received specific training to improve the emotional and instructional support provided to their students through teacher-child interactions. As one of the procedures of this study, participant's interactions with their students were video recorded to measure implementation of what they had been taught during trainings.

Consultation sessions were provided at the end of each week after training had been provided. During the consultation sessions, there were discussions regarding the participant's perspective of the video recorded interaction, acknowledgment of strengths, and opportunities for support that included what the student investigator would do during subsequent weeks to assist the participant's performance while working with their students. At the conclusion of training and consultation and after pre and post assessment data were collected, an additional two weeks were provided as a maintenance phase to provide additional support and measure performance. The results of this study proved promising for increasing teacher-child interactions through emotional and instructional training and consultation. With an alpha level set at .05, there were significant differences among several of the dimensions from the CLASS instrument.

Keywords

Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS); Consultation; Emotional training; Head start; Professional development; Teacher-child interaction; Training

Disciplines

Education | Pre-Elementary, Early Childhood, Kindergarten Teacher Education | Social and Behavioral Sciences

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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