Feasibility of the AllPlay Learn professional development course for early childhood educators and primary school teachers: a pilot randomised controlled trial

There are two intervention groups: 1) intervention group A: an online professional learning course (“professional learning group”); 2) intervention group B: an online web resource (“website group”). AllPlay Learn professional learning course: AllPlay Learn Inclusive Foundations for Children with Disabilities courses (www.learn.allplaylearn.org.au) will be available to Victorian long day care centres, kindergartens, and government primary and secondary schools from August 2019. The courses focus on content knowledge about disabilities and provide strengths- and evidence-based strategies that are practical and simple for educators and teachers to implement. Teachers can choose from different lessons within a course to suit their learning needs and interests. Completion of each course takes approximately 4 to 6 hours. AllPlay Learn website: AllPlay Learn’s website (www.allplaylearn.org.au) will be available from August 2019. The website provides information and resources that draw on strengths- and evidence-based research to help create inclusive educational environments for children and young people with disabilities and developmental challenges. The website has targeted information and resources for: • Primary and secondary schools • Early childhood educators and professionals • Primary and secondary school teachers • Children and young people with disabilities • Guardians, carers and parents Information and resources are easy to download and print for use across homes, long day care, kindergarten and schools. Intervention procedure: Teachers/educators in the professional learning group will be asked to complete the professional learning course during the first three weeks of Term 4 (October 2019). Similarly, teachers/educators in the website group will be asked to use the website within the same period. Over the six weeks directly following the study period, teachers/educators allocated to the professional learning group or website groups will be asked to implement and document their use of the AllPlay Learn content knowledge, strategies and resources in planning, teaching and assessment. All teachers/educators will be provided with a journal. All planning, assessment and implementation documents pertaining to the focus child will be placed by the teachers/educators into the journal. For group A there are a core set of 5 modules that participants must complete as part of the professional learning, and they can choose 2 out of 5 elective modules. They must complete 7 modules to complete the professional learning, but can take up to 10 modules in total. Participants must complete the course over the first three week intervention phase of the trial. The 5 early childhood core modules are focused on: Basics of inclusion, questions that promote inclusion, the ABCs of behaviour, emotions, and educator wellbeing. ECE participants can choose 2-5 elective modules: Anxiety, autism, communication disorders, developmental delay, physical disability and cerebral palsy. The 5 primary school core modules are focused on: Basics of inclusion, questions that promote inclusion, the ABCs of behaviour, peer mediation, and teacher wellbeing. Primary school participants can choose 2-5 elective modules: Anxiety, Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, behaviour, physical disability and cerebral palsy. The 6 secondary school core modules are focused on: Basics of inclusion, three inclusive questions to consider, the ABCs of behaviour, Emotion and behaviour regulation, Post-school transitions, and teacher wellbeing. Secondary school participants can choose 2-3 elective modules: Anxiety, Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and autism. Each training course will take between 4-6 hours to complete all of the required modules. Statistics regarding access and usage of the professional learning courses will be available from the AllPlay Learn system (e.g. amount of time teachers spend on each course or website topic, which modules they complete etc). For group B the information and resources provided are readily available at: https://allplaylearn.org.au/ Participants in group B are not given guidance on how often to access the website, this is at their own discretion over the three week intervention period. Participants in group B will be given a website log in so that we can monitor the website metrics.