THE TRAINING AND VALIDATION OF YOUTH‐PREFERRED SOCIAL BEHAVIORS OF CHILD‐CARE PERSONNEL¹

Abstract

This research sought to identify, train, and validate social behaviors preferred by youths to be used by youth-care personnel (called teaching-parents). With training, consistent increases in seven preferred behaviors were observed for the six teaching-parent trainees. These behaviors included offering to help, "getting to the point", giving reasons why a behavior is important to a youth, providing descriptions of alternative behaviors, positive feedback, smiling, and positive motivational incentives (i.e., points for task mastery exchanged for tangible reinforcers). Increases in these behaviors correlated with increases in the youths' ratings of the quality of the trainees' interactions. Posttraining levels of preferred social behavior and youth ratings for trainees also compared favorably with levels for successful professional teaching-parents. These results suggest that teaching-parents can be successfully trained to interact with youths in ways that are preferred by the youths.

The Teaching-Family Model

“…These include the positive skill teaching elements already described (including explanations about the natural consequences for skills and praise) frequent and fun times with each youth; consistent, repeated signs of interest in, concern for, and appreciation of each youth; humor, encouragement, and enthusiasm; and offering and providing help to the youths in areas important to them (Bedlington, Kirigin, Wolf, Brown, & Tigner, 1979). Evidence for the reinforcing properties of some of these and other behaviors was also supplied by Willner et al in 1977.…”

“…We developed a more practical and intense week-long workshop so that the trainees could go through the complete handbook, see videotapes of a variety of problems, role-play solutions to those problems by applying the major elements of the model, and finally the trainees were evaluated and given feedback and suggestions about their role-played solutions. We conducted research to evaluate and validate that training program (Braukrnann, Fixsen, Kirigin, Phillips, Phillips, & Wolf, 1975;Kirigin, Ayala, Braukrnann, Brown, Fixsen, Phillips, & Wolf, 1975;Willner et al, 1977).…”

Evidence-Based Staff Training: A Guide for Practitioners

“…The first training step involves the trainer providing a rationale for the importance of the skill being trained and a description of the behaviors required to perform the skill (Willner, Braukmann, Kirigin, Fixsen, Phillips, & Wolf, 1977). This step is generally referred to as instructions in the BST model.…”

Teaching Practitioners to Conduct Behavioral Skills Training: A Pyramidal Approach for Training Multiple Human Service Staff

“…An additional step was added that involved providing a rationale to the trainees (i.e., whom the participants would be training) regarding why the target skill would be trained. Providing a rationale is a recommended step when training staff (Fleming, Oliver, & Bolton, 1996;Willner et al, 1977) though it is not always specifically included in descriptions of BST (Miles & Wilder, 2009;Nigro-Bruzzi & Sturmey, 2010;Sarokoff & Sturmey, 2004). Also, one more step was added to clearly specify that the trainer should maintain a written record of each trainee's level of performance while practicing performing the skill being trained.…”