Supporting Parents In Responsive Interactions & Teaching

I) Funding and Partnerships

V) What are the components of the RTC?

IV) What is RTC?

II) What is Project SPIRIT?

Three year grant from the US Department

of Education’s Native Hawaiian Education

Program Act

Implemented by The Center on Disability

Studies, College of Education, University

of Hawai`i at Mānoa

Partnered with ALU LIKE, Inc., a Native

Hawaiian organization

SPIRIT is a parent-mediated prevention

designed to help parents learn to use

developmental principles for interacting

with their young children in a responsive

manner that promotes healthy

relationships, optimal development, and

school readiness.

Range of Quantitative & Qualitative

Measures

• Empirical observations

• Surveys & Interviews

• Maternal Behavior Rating Scale

• CES-D maternal/parental depression

scale

• Child Behavior Rating Scale

• Transdisciplinary Play Based

Assessment

• Battelle Developmental Inventory 2nd

Ed. (BDI-2)

• Parental satisfaction survey & 3-

month follow-up

Monitor & adapt curriculum based on

cultural relevancy & sustainability

III) Participants & Overview

• Plan to serve 350 families over 3 yrs

• Targeting predominantly Native HI

communities along the Wai`anae

Coast & in Waimanalo

• “At-Risk” children 1 – 4 years

• Community-based trainers meet

with parent & child together in their

home or neighborhood

• Develop Family Action Plan based

on values and goals of the family

combined with the developmental

needs of the child

• Meet for about 1 hour a week for

6-months to practice strategies

• Provide skills, support, &

encouragement for the parents

based on the Responsive Teaching

Curriculum (RTC)

RTC is a developmental curriculum based on decades of multi-cultural research

• Created by G. Mahoney & J. D.

MacDonald over 25 years of research funded by Office of Special Education Programs of DOE

- 11 multi-year research & model demonstration projects awarded

www.responsiveteaching.org

• Flexible. individualized program focusing on foundations of healthy development

• Relationship focused & parent mediated

• Sustainable - embedded in daily routines & activities

Jean Johnson, DrPH - Principal Investigator

Dewayne Bettag, MS - Co-PI & Project Coordinator

VI) Expected Outcomes

VII) Outcome Measurements

• Enhance d positive interactions between child and caregiver(s)

• Reduced “problem behaviors”

• Reduced caregiver frustration

• Increase d frequency of “pivotal behaviors”

• Improved social-emotional, communication, and cognitive developmental scores

• Increase d school readiness