Distance education for early childhood professionals: Effectiveness of online instruction in social emotional development and challenging behavior

Increasingly online instruction and related distance learning mechanisms are being used to address professional development needs in the field of early childhood care and education. The goal of this study was to investigate whether online courses are an effective method of providing early childhood personnel with the knowledge and skills to support social/emotional development and reduce challenging behavior of preschool children with and without disabilities in their classrooms. The study focus was threefold: to measure whether two online courses are effective in increasing early childhood professionals' knowledge of the ways in which they can support social-emotional development and intervene when young children engage in problem behaviors; to determine whether teachers who receive the online instruction employ the strategies taught in the courses, and; to explore whether the online training has an effect on the emotional development and social behavior of children in the classrooms of teachers who receive training. A quasi-experimental design involving multiple measures was used to investigate the research questions. Results of the study suggest that online instruction can, in and of itself, increase participants' knowledge about a particular subject. However, the study did not clearly substantiate that participants were willing and/or successful in applying all aspects of what they learned to their work with children. The data suggest that there was a change in children's behavior during the period of the study, but whether or not it was as a result of their teachers' participation in the inservice training cannot be substantiated. The results confirm the need for additional research on topics such as instructional design as well as additional instructional support concurrent with and/or as a follow-up to online instruction.