(PS3-46) Development of a Brief Online Training for Early Childhood Educators on Identifying and Addressing Stress/anxiety/trauma in Young Children

Background:  

Early childhood (EC) mental health concerns are prevalent and continue to rise (Campbell et al., 2021). In young children, internalizing problems (e.g., anxiety, trauma-related stress) frequently co-occur with externalizing problems (e.g., oppositionality, inattention, defiance), and this co-occurrence has an early age onset (Fanti et al., 2010). There is strong support for prevention and early intervention to address EC anxiety and behavioral issues within a school context, as the transition to preschool is a critical age for development of core emotion regulation skills, stress reduction, and attachment (Fox et al., 2003). However, evidence-based tools designed for EC educators to identify, treat, and prevent EC anxiety and behavioral issues are still needed. In an effort to provide such a tool, we are developing and evaluating a self-guided, interactive, online training that aims to help EC educators: a) identify stress/anxiety/trauma in young children and b) use evidence-based strategies to support their students and their own well-being.

Methods:  

The first phase of the study involved the development of an online, self-paced training, in partnership with staff in a large and diverse school district in the northeastern US. Second, researchers completed a walk-through of the training with four EC stakeholders (i.e., educators, school psychologists) and conducted semi-structured interviews to receive real-time feedback on the usability and appropriateness of the training content. Initial training revisions were informed by these interviews in an iterative refinement process. The second phase of the study will involve recruiting 50 EC educators to complete the training and provide feedback on its feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy via pre- and post-training surveys.

Results:

After reviewing the training, EC stakeholders highlighted the need for more information on how to differentiate internalizing and externalizing symptoms of stress, anxiety, and trauma in young children. They also requested incorporation of evidence-based strategies to manage dysregulation in the classroom. Additional feedback included employing these same evidence-based strategies to help EC educators manage their own stress/anxiety and model these practices to their students. The second phase of data collection is being conducted in the spring of 2024, and analyses will be completed during the summer of 2024.

Conclusion:  

Decades of research on treatment of EC disorders have identified core strategies that improve young children’s behavioral and emotional dysregulation and decrease child and family stress. Brief and accessible interventions focused on helping EC educators identify and address EC emotional and behavioral concerns hold the promise of decreasing presenting symptoms, offsetting the secondary development of other disorders, preempting the progression of long-term problems, and positively influencing developmental trajectories from a very young age. The scalability of implementing self-paced, online interventions in school contexts has the potential to reduce disparities, particularly for EC educators who may not otherwise have access to training in evidence-based practices.