Tuning in to Kids in School - Competence Building and Collaboration in the Team Around Primary School Students (TIKiS)

The current project is a randomized controlled trial of the Australian evidence-based parenting program Tuning in to Kids® which has been adapted for using with Norwegian elementary school teachers (Tuning in to Kids in Schools; TIKiS).

TIKiS aims to improve emotion socialization practices of primary school teachers so that children's emotional competence is promoted.

This project will determine effectiveness and implementation quality of TIKiS through questionnaire and observation measures given before and after the intervention, comparing intervention and wait-list control schools.

Study Overview

• Status: Enrolling by invitation
• Conditions: Healthy
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Emotion-focused: Tuning in to Kids in School

Detailed Description

This project is a collaboration between the University of Oslo, the education agency and health agency in Oslo municipality, Norway.

A total of 20 schools will be recruited for the project, and randomly allocated to the intervention or wait-list control condition (10 in each). Teachers in the intervention schools will receive the TIKiS intervention delivered by trained facilitators. Facilitators of the teacher groups will be from staff from education and health agencies and will have at least a masters' degree in psychology, pedagogy or similar.

The TIKiS program facilitators attend a two day training in TIKiS. In addition, they will attend a 90-minute workshop and receive three days of 90-minute program supervision before they act as program facilitators for the teachers.

In the intervention condition, school leaders will attend adapted three 90-minute group sessions to assist with implementation. All teachers in the intervention schools will attend introduction sessions outlining the program. Then teachers and other relevant school staff (special education teachers, resource teachers, social teachers and assistants) in grade 1-4 (the first 4 years of elementary school) will attend six x 90 minute group sessions led by a pair of program facilitators.

In intervention and control schools, facilitators of groups, teachers and relevant school staff will complete questionnaires at baseline and follow-up. Observations of classes of these teachers and staff will be conducted at baseline and follow-up.

Control schools will receive the intervention following completion of all follow-up measures.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Estimated): 450
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Norway
  • Oslo, Norway, 0373
    • Department of Psychology, University of Oslo

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• School staff that work with children in grades 1.-4.

Exclusion Criteria:

• (Exclusion from analysis) school staff in the intervention school that did not participate in the intervention.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Other
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Intervention; Teachers and relevant school staff six 90-minute supervised group lessons with a 1-2 week space between each time. School leaders attend three 90-minute sessions adapted to them	Behavioral: Emotion-focused: Tuning in to Kids in School; The aim of the TIKiS is to improve emotion coaching and reduce emotion dismissing in elementary school teachers through six x 90-minute group sessions.
No Intervention: Waitlist Control; Receives no intervention, business as usual. Receives intervention the following year.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Classroom Assessment Scoring system - CLASS- K3	A structured, validated observation measure of a classroom's social-emotional environment. Scored from 1 to 7 where 1 is low score (few behaviour markers observed or are rarely observed) and 7 is a high score (many behaviour indicators are frequently observed). (Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008).	Right before intervention (Baseline) and 5 months after intervention (post-intervention)
Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Teacher Version - CCNES-T:	A measure of emotion coaching and emotion dismissing behaviors (Fabes et al., 2000). This study uses a short form of the original CCNES (21 questions), which has been modified and translated to Norwegian. Teachers rate how likely they are to respond to childrens' expressions of negative emotions in various scenarios on a scale of 1 (very unlikely) to 7 (very likely).	Right before intervention (Baseline) and 5 months after intervention (post-intervention)
Program differentiation	Program differentiation is how differnt our intervention is from similar interventions that the school has used recently. This is measured by asing teachers to what degree they have worked with similar teaching strategies in the previous year on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 5 (a lot).	Right before intervention (Baseline) and 5 months after intervention (post-intervention)
Content Fidelity/Adherance	Content Fidelity/Adherance is is how much of the manual and planned content that the facilitators cover for each group session. Facilitators fill in a checklist of core components after each group session to get the proportion of core content completed for each session and in total for the whole intervention.	Right before intervention (Baseline) and 5 months after intervention (post-intervention)
Dosage	Dosage is how much of the intervention each participant received, which will be measured as the proportion of intervention sessions that each teacher participated in.	Right before intervention (Baseline) and 5 months after intervention (post-intervention)
Reach	Reach is measured as the proportion of eligible teachers that have participated in the intervention, and the proportion of eligible schools that have participated.	Right before intervention (Baseline) and 5 months after intervention (post-intervention)
Teacher Implementation	Teacher feedback on program satisfaction and use of program content will be measured quantitively trhough a questionnaire and qualitatively and through focus group interviews. The questionnaire will ask about obstacles and ease of attending the intervention and using the learned content afterwards, and what aspects they found useful on a scale of 1 to 7 where 1 is a low score and 7 is a high score. The questionnaire will also ask about what cocepts they have used, and what stopped them from attending using multiple choice with a free text option. The focus group interviews will be used to get a more detailed assessment of program satisfaction and use of program content	5 months after intervention (post-intervention)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Affect Integration Inventory (AII)	A measure of how well various emotions are integrated (Solbakken & Monsen, 2017). Teachers rate how well 18 statements about emotions describe them from a scale of 0 (doesnt fit at all) to 9 (fits perfectly).	Right before intervention (Baseline) and 5 months after intervention (post-intervention)
Bergen burnout inventory (BBI)	A measure of employee burnout with 9 items. Participants rate how nmuch they agree with each of the 9 statemetns from 1 (disagree completely ) to 6 (agree completely). (Matthiesen, 1992; Salmela-Aro et al., 2011)	Right before intervention (Baseline) and 5 months after intervention (post-intervention)
Hopkins symptom checklist 10 - HSCL-10	A measure of distress, which consists of two subscales; anxiety and depression (Derogatis et al., 1974; Hesbacher et al., 1980; Strand et al., 2003). This is a short form of the HSCL with only 10 questions (6 depression, 4 anxiety). Particiapnts rate how much they have experienced each of the 10 symptoms in the past week form 1 (not at all) to 4 (a lot).	Right before intervention (Baseline) and 5 months after intervention (post-intervention)
Satisfaction with Life scale (SWLS)	A 5 item scale that measures satisfaction with life (Diener et al., 1985). Participatns rate how much they agree with each of the 5 statements on a scale of 1 (fits poorly) to 7 (fits perfectly).	Right before intervention (Baseline) and 5 months after intervention (post-intervention)
Collaboration between school health service, educational psychological services and teachers in Oslo.	Likert scale from 1 to 5 of how well the employees experience the collaboration with the other services. Where 1 is they disagree completely that there is a good collaboration and 5 is they agree completely that there is a good colaboration.	Right before intervention (Baseline) and 5 months after intervention (post-intervention)

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Sophie Havighurst
• Collaborators: University of Melbourne; University of Stavanger
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Sophie Havighurst, University of Oslo

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): August 1, 2022
• Primary Completion (Estimated): June 1, 2025
• Study Completion (Estimated): July 31, 2025

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: February 5, 2024
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: July 8, 2024
• First Posted (Actual): July 15, 2024

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): July 15, 2024
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: July 8, 2024
• Last Verified: July 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Intervention; Schools; Emotional Competence; Tuning in to Kids; Teachers; TIK; TIKiS; Emotion Socialisation
• Other Study ID Numbers: TIKiS Norway

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No