Emailed Prompt Package to Promote Maintenance and Generalization of Early Childhood Educators' Behavior Specific Praise

Although behavior-specific praise (BSP) is a recommended practice for early childhood populations, early childhood educators often deliver variable rates of BSP. To support educators, face-to-face, school-based consultation may be provided; however, this may not always be feasible. To address this, emerging research is beginning to investigate the effectiveness, feasibility, and social validity of emailed supports to overcome barriers to feasibility. Using a multiple baselines across participants design, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness and social validity of an emailed prompt package for increasing three early childhood educators' rates of BSP in target and generalization classroom activities in a university-based child development center. Results indicated that all three early childhood educators' rates of BSP increased and maintained in both target and generalization settings. Limitations and implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Automated summary

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness and social validity of an emailed prompt package for increasing early childhood educators' rates of behavior-specific praise (BSP) in target and generalization classroom activities. The results indicated that the emailed prompt package was effective in increasing and maintaining the BSP rates of the educators in both target and generalization settings.