Researcher ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0434-9659

Graduation Year

2020

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Psychology

Reader 1

Stacey Wood

Reader 2

Theodore Bartholomew

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2020 Madison G Walker

Abstract

Teachers and researchers alike have long debated the most effective strategy for managing children’s classroom behavior. While many methods exist, the most common, and yet most debated, approach in the U.S. remains to be exclusionary discipline, such as suspension and expulsion. However, research has consistently shown this method to be ineffective and even harmful for both students and teachers, as well as incredibly inequitable (Emmer et al., 2015; American Psychological Association, 2008; Tobin et al., 1996 as cited in Emmer et al., 2015). These clear detriments highlight the need for different, more effective classroom management strategies. The current proposed study will address one such alternative, Teacher-Child Interaction Training (TCIT). It will delve into the effects of a TCIT intervention on kindergarten- aged children’s classroom behavior, as well as the intervention’s impact on student-teacher relationships. Over the course of a semester, four classrooms (consisting of a total of 88 kindergarten students and 4 kindergarten teachers) will be randomly assigned to either a TCIT or control condition. Given past research, it is expected that children who receive the TCIT intervention will show increased prosocial behaviors, decreased emotional dysregulation, and decreased aggressive/disruptive behaviors over time in comparison to children in the control group. Additionally, at the end of the intervention (T3), positive student-teacher relationships are projected to be more equitably distributed across student racial groups in the experimental group than in the control group.

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