Supporting Parents and Teachers in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A parent education and skills training program for promoting children’s social-emotional development

Abstract

Social and emotional competences are considered key generic skills for the 21st century, and there is no doubt that developing such competencies is vital, beginning in early childhood. It is unfortunate that few existing training programs for parents and teachers address the issue of how best to build such competences in young children. This paper reports findings from a study of the impact of a behavior training program on participating parents, teachers and children. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the training was delivered through the medium of interactive technology. The program used a tiered train-the-trainer approach to develop skills in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) in teachers (n =7). A supervisor with over 30 years of frontline experience taught the program, and then the trained teachers became mentors to parents (n =7). The mentors helped parents learn and apply these skills in their interaction with their children (n =7), with the aim of improving the children’s social and emotional competencies. Evaluation of the program involved addressing the following questions: (1) From parents’ perceptions, how has the program impacted on (i) their attainment of knowledge, skills and attitudes for interacting positively with their children; (ii) their personal growth as parents, and (iii) the social-emotional development of their children? (2) From mentors’ perceptions, how has the program impacted on (i) their capacity to apply knowledge and skills learnt in training to their mentoring of participating parents; and (ii) the benefits for participating parents and children? Qualitative analysis of data from multiple sources indicated that the train-the-trainer approach had a positive impact on ABA skill application and efficacy of parents and teachers, and also advanced the social-emotional development of the children. Challenges of using online medium for training are also discussed.