Coping Skills Modeling and Proactive Responding Coaching for Teachers

Abstract

Supporting the development of children’s social-emotional and regulatory skills is of increasing importance in early elementary school settings but is also increasingly difficult to accomplish given teacher-to-child ratios and instructional expectations. This study aimed to develop an intervention to support teachers to integrate modeling of coping skills throughout the school day by labeling emotions that arise in the classroom environment, identifying possible coping strategies for those emotions, and providing guided practice with those strategies for children. We also aimed to train and coach teachers to attend to a target child’s precursor behaviors and respond proactively when they began demonstrating indicators of distress or social-emotional support needs. A concurrent multiple baseline across participants design was used to evaluate the impacts of teacher training and weekly coaching on teachers’ use of these skills. Overall, teachers demonstrated more frequent modeling of coping skills and proactive response techniques during intervention compared to baseline, though attrition precluded the determination of a functional relation. Results for teachers’ integration of component skills (such as labeling emotions and labeling coping strategies) are also presented. Teachers found the training procedures to be socially valid and meaningful for the needs of their students.