Needs Assessment of Teacher Beliefs and PBIS Practices in Early Childhood

A review of the still-emerging literature surrounding early childhood Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) suggests that certain contextual factors, including teacher demographics and beliefs, can impact the successful implementation, fidelity, and long-term sustainability of PBIS practices within an early childhood program. In conducting the current needs assessment, the stakeholders of a universal 4K program already implementing PBIS wanted to better understand how these factors were related to the teacher perceptions of implementation of PBIS practices across classrooms. In so doing, they could better target professional development and coaching efforts for their staff, and could use this initial survey as a benchmark against which to measure future growth. Overall, the needs assessment identified that early career teachers reported less confidence in their classroom management skills, but that this belief did not appear to impact their perceived levels of PBIS implementation in the classroom. Instead, teacher beliefs about whether or not behavior can be altered by environmental factors and influenced by teachers were more indicative of perceived PBIS implementation levels. By identifying these relationships between educator traits and beliefs, as well as the areas of strength and future growth within the program and among staff groups, recommendations were made so that the program could target specific sub-groups of teachers and support the increase of specific skills or beliefs in their future professional development efforts