Making the Most of Interactions: Results From a Randomized Controlled Trial of an Intervention in Ecuador

• In Event: Professional Development for Early Childhood Educators in Latin America: Three Experiences Across the Continent

Abstract

The current paper examines some of the results and lessons learned from a Randomized Control Trial of a Teacher-Child Interaction focused intervention in Quito, Ecuador. The intervention was an adaptation of an American intervention, developed specifically for the Ecuadorian context and Latin America. This was called Aprovechando al Máximo las Interacciones en el Aula (AMIA), which is translated to Making the Most of Classroom Interactions. AMIA is a coaching intervention in which the mentor and teacher meet regularly and follow a structured procedure to examine the teacher’s teaching and work together to improve her teaching practice. The intervention is based on the Teaching Through Interactions Framework (Hamre et al., 2013), which focuses on key teacher-child interactions as the mechanism through which students develop and learn.
Following the adaptation and training, the team conducted a field trial with 100 randomly assigned treatment and 100 matched control early elementary school teachers in Quito, Ecuador, during the 2017-2018 school year. At the end of the implementation, a post-intervention assessment was conducted. This included an assessment of the quality of Teacher-Child Interactions, as measured by the CLASS (Pianta et al., 2008) that has been widely used in several studies worldwide (e.g., Araujo et al., 2014; Hu et al., 2016; Leyva et al., 2015; Pakarinen et al., 2010). We also included a measure of teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning, using the Ideas about Children measure (Schaefer & Edgerton, 1985). Items measure the extent to which teachers believe learning should be child-focused; it has shown significant correlations with a teacher's classroom practices (Driscoll & Pianta, 2010; Pianta et al., 2005). Second, we included a measure of Knowledge of Effective Teacher-Child Interactions measure (KETCI; LoCasale-Crouch, 2009) to assess teachers’ knowledge about evidence-based interactions that promote positive development. This measure has previously been used in a study with early childhood teachers to test the effectiveness of a professional development course (LoCasale-Crouch et al., 2012), and demonstrated sensitivity to intervention effects in a RCT trial (Early et al., 2017). Finally, we assessed Teachers’ burnout using the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (Maslach et al., 1996) and Teachers’ Perceived Stress, as measured by The Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al.,1983) as they might be also moderators of the intervention’s effects.
Results showed null results for the quality of Teacher-Child Interactions, Beliefs about Teaching and Learning, and Burnout and Stress. However, a significant difference in favor of the treatment group was found for the Knowledge of Effective Teacher-Child interactions.
Knowledge acquired in-service professional development opportunities is likely of relevant significance to enact effective practices (König et al., 2014) since it plays a key role in classroom-decision making (Shavelson, 2010; Shulman, 1987; Weinert, 2001). However, it is possible that to be translated into observed effective practices more time is needed. Lessons from the expertise research suggests that providing ample opportunities and time to practice the new knowledge acquired may result in teachers’ ability to transform his knowledge to interpret and act adaptively on what is happening in the classroom (Hackl, 2004).

Authors

• Francisca Romo, Centro de Políticas Comparadas de Educación, Universidad Diego Portales de Chile

• Jennifer LoCasale-Crouch, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Carolina Melo-Hurtado, Universidad de los Andes

• Yyannu Cruz-Aguayo