Increasing the Active Supervision of Inclusive Early Childhood Education Pre-Service Teachers Using Goal Setting and Step Counters.
Step counters plus a daily goal nudge pre-service teachers to move more and talk with kids, but the effect needs a feedback boost to stick.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers gave 12 pre-service teachers a Fitbit and a daily step goal. The goal was a large share above their baseline steps.
Teachers worked in inclusive preschool rooms. The study used an ABAB design. Steps and child interactions were counted each day.
What they found
Step counts rose a little, but the lines bounced around. Child interactions went up more clearly when steps increased.
Two teachers hit the step goal every day. Most missed it half the time. The Fitbit alone did not lock in the change.
How this fits with other research
Justus et al. (2023) also handed teachers a cheap counter. Their teachers doubled praise rates. Same self-monitoring idea, different target.
Minard et al. (2026) added supervisor feedback after unsupervised sessions. That kept teacher interactions high. S et al. left out feedback, which may explain the wobbly results.
Perrin et al. (2016) mixed goal setting with public posting in a group home. Goals worked better when everyone saw the chart. The new study kept goals private, perhaps blunting the effect.
Why it matters
If you coach new teachers, pair the step counter with a quick end-of-day check-in. A 30-second praise or prompt from you may turn the weak bump into a steady climb. Keep the goal visible to the whole team if possible.
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Add a 30-second end-of-day check: ask the teacher if she hit her step goal and give one specific praise.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
A reversal design (i.e., ABAB) was used to examine whether increasing steps correlate with higher levels of student interactions. Furthermore, does allowing educators to monitor their steps and set step goals enhance the potential for intervention adoption and lead to lasting teacher behavior change? Each pre-service inclusive early childhood special education teachers were in the final year of their preparation program, during their student teaching practicum. The study took place in two public k-5 elementary schools situated in a mid-size city (approximately 52K in population) in the Southern United States. In addition to visual analysis procedures, nonoverlap of all pairs was used to assess overlap, and Tau-U were used to calculate effect size. The research questions were: (1) Does goal setting and step counting increase the physical steps taken by educators during instruction?; 2) Is there a functional relation between steps taken and teacher-student interactions?; and (3) Are step increases a socially valid approach for increasing teacher-student engagement? Although the results point to minor (positive) effects on teacher steps, the data's variability prevents us from drawing conclusions about the relationship between independent and dependent variables. Nonetheless, when comparing baseline levels to MSI behaviors, we can observe meaningful shifts in a therapeutic direction in the MSI data.. Implications for research and practices are also presented.
Behavior modification, 2025 · doi:10.1177/01454455251325332