Variation in Teachers' Bankingtime Implementation and Improved Teacher Practice: The Role of the Teacher-Consultant Relationship

BankingTime is a consultant-supported, relationship-based intervention for preschool teachers and children, intended to improve children’s disruptive behavior. In a randomized controlled trial, children of teachers in the BankingTime showed improved behavior (Williford et al., 2014). The prevention science field has called for a better understanding of how variations in intervention implementation are associated with outcomes. Thus, this study explores teachers’ perception of the teacher-consultant relationship and associated BankingTime implementation and the association between the teacher-consultant relationship and improvement in teacher practice as mediated by BankingTime implementation.

Methods: Data were collected as part of a trial examining the impact of BankingTime. In BankingTime, teachers meet with individual children 2-3 times a week for 7 weeks. Sessions are time-limited and focus on teachers’ implementation of relationship-based strategies. A consultant supports teachers’ BankingTime implementation through regular feedback. The current sample included 59 teachers assigned to the BankingTime condition.

Measures:  The teacher-consultant relationship reflects teachers’ perception of support and usefulness of their consultant, reported three times over the intervention year. Several measures assess BankingTime Intervention Implementation: Teachers completed session notes that included information about the date and duration of intervention sessions to calculate Banking Time Dosage, trained observers rated teachers’ Quality of Banking Time Implementation on video-taped submissions and consultants reported on their impressions of the quality of each teacher’s Engagement in Banking Time. Finally, Teachers’ Positive Interactions with Child was assessed with the Teaching Task Rating Scale—Preschool Version (TTRS) during a standardized play task.

Results: The teacher-consultant relationship related to multiple measures of intervention implementation, which were in turn associated with teachers’ improved practice. Of the implementation measures explored, teachers’ implementation quality most consistently related to positive outcomes. Findings suggest that it is not enough to do an intervention; the effectiveness with which interventions are implemented may be the most critical ingredient to achieving desired outcomes. Final models will use Mplus and FIML to account for nested structure, missing data and to test all relationships simultaneously.