Using occupational performance coaching to target teachers' perception of their own performance, satisfaction, and self- efficacy in supporting the self-regulation of their students: A pilot study

The policy of inclusive education has changed the makeup of the Canadian classroom. Today's elementary school teacher is faced with the challenge of meeting the myriad classroom needs of their students, many of whom demonstrate disruptive classroom behaviours due to different underlying diagnoses. It is known that these behaviours have a large impact on a teachers' stress level. This increased stress can lead to reduced performance, dissatisfaction in performance, and lower self-efficacy. Only 13% of surveyed Canadian teachers felt they could manage the challenge of these behaviours. Preliminary studies of the Alert Program®, an innovative program which promotes the use of sensorimotor strategies to enable students to attain and maintain an appropriate level of arousal and self-regulation for learning, have shown effectiveness. Occupational Performance Coaching (OPC), an occupation and client centred approach, has been shown to be successful in helping adults meet their occupational goals.The primary objective of this master's thesis was to estimate the extent to which elementary school teachers' perceived performance, satisfaction of performance, and self-efficacy changed following participation in a one day training and weekly OPC on the use of tools for self-regulation of their students. This study used a multiple case replication study design. A cohort of regular classroom elementary school teachers (n=11) were recruited from the Quebec Eastern Townships School Board. Intervention took place over a period of 11.3 weeks. The intervention included a one day workshop, based on the Alert Program®, entitled Tools to Improve Attention and Self-regulation for Students in the Classroom and was followed by eight individual sessions of OPC with the teachers. The key outcome measures were the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM), used to assess the teachers' perceived performance and satisfaction performance in supporting self-regulation of their students, and Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) to evaluate functional goal attainment. The Teachers' Self-Efficacy Scale-Classroom Management (TSES-CM) was used to measure teacher's self-efficacy in classroom behaviour management. Open ended questions were used in semi-structured interviews and a daily log was filled out by the teachers to collect data on the sensorimotor strategies implemented in their classroom. The results of this pilot study suggest that the use of a workshop and OPC sessions with teachers improved their perceived perception, satisfaction and self-efficacy when working with students with self-regulation issues. Perceived performance improved in 82% of participants, perceived satisfaction improved in 91% and self-efficacy improved in 73% of participants. Overall results on outcome measures indicated clinically significant change with a probability of response at 0.77 (CI=0.58, 0.85). The results of GAS indicate that progress was noted in teachers as well as students. Preliminary results suggest that the use of OPC as a school-based OT intervention with teachers can be beneficial.

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