| Many states require or recommend school-based, problem-solving teams in an effort to develop interventions to address student and teacher needs. Often these teams have not been trained in a structured problem-solving process, which is thought to improve the quality of interventions developed by a team. Creative Problem Solving (CPS) is a problem-solving process developed from creativity and cognitive psychology literature and has been found to increase team effectiveness. CPS has been modified for use with school-based, problem-solving teams, which are called General Education Intervention (GEI) teams in the state of Indiana, to assist in developing quality interventions. This modified process is called CPS for GEI teams. School-based problem-solving teams, CPS, and treatment acceptability literature were discussed. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of training in CPS for GEI teams on team members' ratings of familiarity, acceptability, and perceived effectiveness of interventions.; A self-report instrument, developed from the literature, assessed team members' ratings of familiarity, acceptability, and perceived effectiveness of positive, negative, and consultation intervention types by problem severity. There were 89 participants from 23 elementary schools that completed pre- and posttest surveys in this treatment (CPS-GEI trained) vs. control (untrained) group experimental design. Findings indicated that training in CPS-GEI significantly increases team members' familiarity ratings for all intervention types measured, acceptability ratings for positive interventions, and perceived effectiveness ratings for consultation interventions. These findings suggest that training school-based, problem-solving teams in a specific process will increase team members' familiarity with interventions. Findings in this study do not support current treatment acceptability models suggesting that familiarity, acceptability, use, integrity, and effectiveness are interrelated and that by changing one variable, others will change as a function of the interrelationship. |
