School-based Consultation to Promote Generalization of Early Childhood Educators’ Evidence-based Practices: A Meta-analysis

Early childhood educators are tasked with supporting young children’s academic, behavioral, and social-emotional through the use of evidence-based practices (EBPs). Unfortunately, early childhood educators may struggle with consistent implementation of EBPs. When this occurs, school-based consultation may be beneficial in promoting early childhood educators’ use of effective classroom management practices and interventions. A critical aspect of school-based consultation is ensuring that early childhood educators generalize strategies they have been trained to use through consultation. However, the extent to which early childhood educators generalize skills trained through consultation across settings, children, and other evidence-based practices is unclear. Therefore, the purpose of this meta-analysis was to synthesize the existing school-based consultation literature in early childhood settings to determine the extent to which early childhood educators generalize skills trained through consultation. A total of 12 studies including 39 educator consultees and 171 effects comprised our final sample. Three-level hierarchical models with robust variance estimation were used to pool both Log Response Ratios and Tau effect sizes for analyses. Overall results indicated school-based consultation had a positive and significant impact on educator generalization of EBPs (LRRi = 0.95; Tau = 0.79). Further, particular implementation supports (e.g., in situ training) significantly contributed to EBP generalization. These results suggest school-based consultation to be an effective means for promoting early childhood educator generalization of EBPs. Implications for research and practice and future research directions are discussed.