Abstract
The purpose of this study was to review training programs for nursery school teachers working with children with developmental disabilities in Japan and examine the effects of the form and content of the training, participant type, and teacher type, as well as child evaluation on the programs’ effectiveness. Eighteen articles were extracted by literature search and manual search. The number of years of experience of the nursery school teachers ranged from firsttime to more than 30 years, and the effects could not be compared by years of experience. Twelve of the papers included children as subjects, and their scores on the questionnaire improved. However, the behavior of the target children was not measured in some of the papers. Improving their behaviors, however, required practice, on-the-job training, and video feedback, as well as lectures. The duration of the training ranged from 6 to 40 hours, and there was no clear relationship between training time and effectiveness, suggesting that training type had effects. Lectures on behavior therapy and behavior analysis were found to have important potential for increasing the knowledge of the nursery school teachers and improving their support plans. Likewise, it is possible that practice and measurement were necessary in addition to lectures to change the behavior of the target children. Future research is necessary to determine which behaviors improve in the target children and the effect of the nursery teachers’ attributes on this improvement.
