An evaluation of the Team-Teach behaviour support training programme in New Zealand

James Griggs, Lawrence Walker and Garry Hornby

Violence is a societal issue and the ability of schools to manage such behaviour and teach students more appropriate behaviour is arguably limited. In its role providing union representatives for primary schoolteachers, the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) maintains that the problem of violence in schools is complex and will not go away. It laments ‘a strong element of primary schools fixing up society but not being resourced to do so’ (NZEI, 2007, p. 2). New Zealand Ministry of Education statistics reveal that the number of assaults on teachers doubled between 2000 and 2008 and the proportion of exclusions for physical assault on staff has increased from 2.7% in 2000 to 6.3% in 2008 (Ministry of Education, 2010). The NZEI (2007, p. 2) also reports an ‘escalation in stand downs and suspensions in students aged 11 to 14 years’. Clearly, violence in schools is affecting both teacher safety and student access to education.

There are a multitude of behavioural ‘experts’ providing training of some kind, which presents a quandary for schools in deciding which programmes to use. There is an added complication when using programmes imported from overseas as a training syllabus designed for use in the UK may well not be sufficiently adapted to meet the ethical, legal and cultural needs of the New Zealand context.

In his vision of education for 2020, Slavin (2010) discusses the need for governments to support the creation, adoption and dissemination of proven programmes for teachers to use. This requires a commitment to the use of evidence based practice and the identification of programmes that work. In a New Zealand context, Church (2003, p. 172) identified a need to ‘ascertain whether well developed overseas interventions can be adapted for use in New Zealand settings and, if so adapted, whether they remain effective interventions’.

One such overseas intervention that is widely used internationally within a special education context is the commercially available Team-Teach behaviour support training programme. Team-Teach will provide, at a cost to the school, a range of training options from the basic six hour foundation course to a more complex five-day tutor training course. The tutor training courses provide schools with their own ‘in-house’ tutors selected from within their own staff. The preferred model for implementation involves training all staff members within a school, regardless of position, to promote consistency. One of the guiding principles of Team-Teach is that extreme and violent behaviour can and should be managed 95% of the time using nonphysical de-escalation strategies. The training programme also provides a range of physical interventions designed specifically for use with children in schools, in direct contrast to programmes that were designed for mental health or law enforcement settings. Team-Teach is accredited by the British Institute of Learning Disabilities (BILD) and has received commendable reports and approval from various organisations in the UK including the Department of Education, the Department of Health, the Office for Standards in Education and the Health and Safety Executive. Is there then a sufficient evidence base to regard Team-Teach as an evidence-based practice as advocated by Slavin (2010)?

The simple answer to this is ‘not yet’. However, there have to date been two significant studies completed on the impact of Team-Teach training. Cotton (2010), in the UK, analysed 379 course evaluations, in addition to conducting a case study within four schools, in an attempt to ascertain the effects of training staff in Team-Teach. The course evaluation data demonstrate a very positive picture of the perceptions of the training, with the majority of trainees (55% to 81% across training areas) consistently rating aspects of training as excellent. The main findings of this study endorsed the Team-Teach approach and also identified a need to further develop observational skills and reflection in order to inform future practice.

Hayden and Pike (2004) completed the most comprehensive review to date of the effectiveness of Team-Teach training in schools in the UK, analysing post-course evaluation data from 10,000 trainees over a period of three years. This study presented ‘overwhelmingly positive ratings for the various aspects of Team-Teach’ (Hayden and Pike, 2004, p. 27) with ‘excellent’ ratings from trainees for specific components ranging from 52% to 85%. Also, 86% of participants found the training to be ‘of value’ and 74% considered it pertinent to their work role. Less than 1% of trainees indicated that ‘none of the training’ was of value or pertinent.

A second component of the Hayden and Pike (2004) study involved an in-depth investigation of a particular group of 32 trainees attending a 12-hour foundation course, both after initial training and at three months into implementation. At the three-month follow-up point 86% of trainee respondents within this study rated ‘all’ of the training as being pertinent to their work role and almost all indicated they would recommend the training to others. In terms of understanding the law, trainees identified a clear shift from uncertainty to confidence. However, trainees identified that the initial training had included too many physical techniques and that they had mostly forgotten them. In addition, some trainees expressed concern over the effectiveness of positive handling strategies with specific students and lamented the lack of support from the school management. They indicated that they would have liked more training in both non-physical de-escalation strategies and debriefing. A recommendation from this study was that ‘Team-Teach courses need to be more tailored for the specific needs of the schools involved’ (Hayden and Pike, 2004, p. 72). Some trainees had come to think of Team-Teach as synonymous with positive handling and failed to make the connection to de-escalation skills, which is in direct contrast to the core objectives of Team-Teach, that is, to use non-physical interventions 95% of the time. This article reports the first evaluation of Team-Teach training in New Zealand. The initial focus of the study is a specific review of feedback on Team-Teach training for all trainees in New Zealand immediately after training and a comparison of these results with those from a similar UK-based study. This is complemented by a series of semi-structured interviews and a full staff survey conducted within two New Zealand special schools examining perceptions of the training further into implementation.