Classroom Interventions

• The McWilliam-Casey Lab has conducted research on interventions to promote children's engagement:
  • Zone defense schedule: Management of the schedule, room arrangement, adult responsibilities, and transitions to improve engagement and to empower classroom staff.
  • Data collection to increase teachers' awareness of engagement: Teachers complete the STARE on one child per day.
  • Incidental teaching: Following children's lead to elicit elaborations on their behavior.
• Teachers should not redirect children from what they are appropriately interested in and their interactions with children should be warm and fuzzy.
  

Research

• Much of the work on classroom interventions was carried out as part of a "project of national significance"� called the National Individualizing Preschool Inclusion Project (2002-2006).
  • U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Project of National Significance, "National Individualizing Preschool Inclusion Project."� $600,000 (3 years)
  • That project was an offshoot of a model demonstration project developed by Mark Wolery, called Individualizing Inclusion in Child Care Model Demonstration Project at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1998-2002).
  • Two studies exploring these interventions were
    • U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Field-Initiated Research, "Improving Engagement in Preschoolers With Disabilities." $538,524 (3 years) (2001-2004)
    • U.S. Department of Education, Office of Speciel Education and Rehabilitative Services, Model Demonstration Research, "The Engagement Classroom: A Model for Preschool Inclusion."� $540,000 (3 years) (2004-2007)
• The zone defense schedule promotes child engagement (Casey & McWilliam, 2005)
  • Casey, A. M., & McWilliam, R. A. (2005). Where is everybody? Organizing adults to promote child engagement. Young Exceptional Children, 8(2), 2-10.
• The STARE is a method to keep track of individual children's engagement in routines (Casey & McWilliam, 2007)
  • Casey, A. M., & McWilliam, R. A. (2007).  The STARE: The Scale for Teachers' Assessment of Routines Engagement.  Young Exceptional Children, 11(1), 2-15.
• We can increase teachers' use of incidental teaching by giving them feedback with graphs of their performance (Casey & McWilliam, 2008)
  • Casey, A. M., & McWilliam, R. A. (2008). Graphical feedback to increase teachers' use of incidental teaching. Journal of Early Intervention, 30, 251-268.
• For inclusion to work, actual instruction needs to occur.
  • McWilliam, R. A., Wolery, M., & Odom, S. L. (2001).  Instructional perspectives in inclusive preschool classrooms. In M. J. Guralnick (Ed.), Early childhood inclusion: Focus on change (pp. 503-530).  Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
• When teachers spend a lot of time redirecting children from what they are engaged in, not surprisingly children's engagement suffers (McWilliam, Scarborough, & Kim, 2003).
• Teachers' affect, being warm and fuzzy, is positively associated with child engagement.
  • McWilliam, R. A., Scarborough, A. A., & Kim, H. (2003). Adult interactions and child engagement. Early Education & Development, 14, 7-27.
  • U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.  Field-Initiated Research Project. "Teaching styles in early intervention: Responsiveness and directiveness." $525,000 (3 years) (1994-1997).
  • McWilliam, R. A. (1991).  Targeting teaching at children's use of time: Perspectives on preschoolers' engagement.  TEACHING Exceptional Children, 23(4), 42-43.
• To do a good job of teaching or of consulting in classrooms, the environment, activities, approaching children, and interactions all need to be considered.
  • McWilliam, R. A., de Kruif, R. E. L., & Zulli, R. A. (2002). The observed construction of teaching: Four contexts. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 16, 148-161.

Consultation, Training, and Technical Assistance Opportunities

• Incidental teaching
• Zone defense schedule
• STARE
• Teaching styles
• VECTOR
• The four contexts of teaching
• Consultation to classrooms (itinerant services)
• Individualizing inclusion (not how to persuade programs to be inclusive)
• See link to Consultation from Robin McWilliam.

Future Directions

• Systematic research on the zone defense schedule is needed.
• More precision on methods to elicit higher order behavior during incidental teaching is needed.
• Research-to-practice activities on teacher affect are needed.