Teacher Professional Development Training: Utilizing Child-Centered Play Therapy Skills in the Classroom

Research shows that a positive relationship between student and teacher has significant positive effects on students' socioemotional and behavioral health (Ansari et al., 2020; Chen & Lindo, 2017; Rucinski et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2016). Research also supports the efficacy of child-centered play therapy (CCPT) to address children's socioemotional and behavioral issues in schools, including CCPT-based interventions like filial therapy and child-teacher relationship training, delivered by teachers, and paraprofessionals (Bratton et al., 2005; Van Fleet, 2013). CCPT or child-teacher relationship training is not always available for teachers and paraprofessionals, especially in economically disadvantaged or rural areas, so researchers and practitioners have developed brief forms of training. Using a pretest, posttest design, we examined the efficacy of a 1-day child-teacher relationship training for 34 preschool teachers and paraprofessionals. We evaluated the impact of the brief training on participants' scores on the Play Therapy Attitude-Knowledge-Skills Survey (S. C. Kao & Landreth, 1997) by conducting a paired-sample t test, finding statistically significant improvement and a large effect size for scores on each subscale after participants completed the training. We discuss limits of this pilot study and implications for future research.