Gerald R. Patterson's theoretical work on childhood aggression strongly influenced the development of the Incredible Years parent and teacher training programs (Patterson, 1982). Patterson's social learning model emphasizes the importance of the family and teacher socialization processes, especially those affecting young children. His "coercion hypothesis" states that negative reinforcement develops and maintains children's deviant behaviors and the parents' and teachers' critical or coercive behaviors. The parents' or teachers' behaviors must therefore be changed so that the children's social interactions can be altered. If parents and teachers can learn to deal effectively with children's misbehavior and to model positive and appropriate problem-solving and discipline strategies, children can develop social competence and reduce aggressive behavior at home and at school.

Children with behavior problems often have low academic achievement and low intellectual functioning during the elementary grades and throughout high school. Reading disabilities are also associated with conduct disorders. Despite the documented links between underachievement, language delays, reading disabilities, and conduct disorders, few attempts have been made to increase the effectiveness of parent training programs by providing parents with academic skills training. Parents, however, need to know how to give their children academic help, especially in reading and writing. Parents must also learn how to work with teachers and schools to foster supportive relationships between home and school.¹

Contents and Program Mechanics

ADVANCE Parent Training Programs (Ages 4-10). ADVANCE, a broader-based family intervention, has the same theoretical foundation as the BASIC programs. Based on cognitive social learning theory, the ADVANCE programs—How To Communicate Effectively With Adults and Children, Problem Solving for Parents, and Problem Solving With Young Children—consist of a leader's manual and six videotapes. Offered to groups of parents who have completed the BASIC programs, the ADVANCE programs take ten to twelve 2-hour sessions to complete. They review the material covered in the BASIC programs and help parents understand how to apply the principles of communication and problem solving to other relationships. See table 3 for the content and objectives presented in the ADVANCE programs.

Supporting Your Child's Education Parent Training Program (Ages 5-10). The EDUCATION Parent Training Program supplements the BASIC parenting programs by focusing on ways to foster children's academic competence, such as offering parents strategies for reading and doing homework with their children, fostering supportive relationships with teachers, and setting up coordinated plans between home and school when necessary. It consists of two videotapes and a manual. This program is implemented after the completion of the BASIC programs because it builds on the behavioral principles regarding social skills that were introduced in BASIC and applies them to academic skills. See table 4 for the content and objectives of the Supporting Your Child's Education parent training program.

School-Age BASIC Parent Training Programs (Ages 5-12). This multicultural series gives greater emphasis to strategies for older children, including logical consequences, monitoring, problem solving, and specific reference to problems such as lying and stealing. There are two programs—Promoting Positive Behaviors in School-Age Children and Reducing Inappropriate Behaviors in School-Age Children—consisting of a leader's manual and three videotapes. See table 5 for the content and objectives of the school-age BASIC parent training programs.

Teacher Training Programs. The Incredible Years teacher training programs, developed in 1995, are six comprehensive group discussion and intervention programs for teachers, school counselors, and psychologists who work with children ages 4 to 10. The six programs are The Importance of Teacher Attention, Encouragement, and Praise; Motivating Children Through Incentives; Preventing Problems—The Proactive Teacher; Decreasing Students' Inappropriate Behavior; Building Positive Relationships With Students; and How To Teach Social Skills, Problem Solving, and Anger Management in the Classroom. The teaching concepts are illustrated with brief videotaped vignettes of teachers interacting with children in classrooms. The settings include large classrooms with 28 children and 1 teacher and smaller special education classrooms with multiple teachers. Group leaders use the videotaped scenes (of teachers handling problem situations effectively and ineffectively) to facilitate discussion, solve problems, and share ideas among teachers. Group leaders help teachers discuss important principles and practice new skills through role-playing and homework assignments. The teacher training programs consist of 12 videotapes. The leader's manual contains the complete text of the video narration, an edited recap of the teacher-child interaction for each vignette, a concise statement of important points, discussion topics and questions, readings and handouts, suggested classroom activities, and a list of recommended readings. See table 6 for the content and objectives presented during the teacher training programs.

Training Methods

In this collaborative, nonblaming, and non-hierarchical training model, the leader is not an "expert" who dispenses advice to parents. Rather, the leader is a collaborator. Collaboration, meaning "to labor together," implies a reciprocal relationship that uses the leader's and parents' knowledge, strengths, and perspectives equally. The leader promotes collaboration through reflection, summary of points made by parents, reframing, reinforcement, support and acceptance, humor and optimism, encouragement of each member's participation, teaching of important concepts, and role-playing exercises. The collaborative process is described extensively in Troubled Families—Problem Children (Webster-Stratton and Herbert, 1994), which is a required text for the group leader training.

Approximately 60 percent of each session is group discussion, problem solving, and support; 25 percent is videotape modeling (25 to 30 minutes of videotape); and 15 percent is teaching (Webster-Stratton and Herbert, 1994). The Incredible Years parent training programs make use of the following instructional approaches:

• Videotape modeling. Because the extent of conduct problems has created a need for services that exceeds available personnel and resources, this intervention had to be cost-effective, widely applicable, and sustaining. Videotape modeling promised to be effective and cost efficient. Modeling theories of learning suggest that parents can improve parenting skills by watching videotaped examples of parents interacting with their children in ways that promote prosocial behaviors and decrease inappropriate behaviors (Bandura, 1977). This method of training is more accessible, especially to less verbally oriented parents, than other methods such as didactic instruction, written handouts, or a sole reliance on group or individual discussion. It promotes generalization and long-term maintenance of positive behaviors by portraying a variety of models in many situations. Furthermore, videotape modeling is cost effective because it can be widely disseminated.

  The programs show parents and children of different sexes, ages, cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, and temperaments interacting with each other in common family situations, such as eating dinner, getting dressed in the morning, and playing. The leader uses these vignettes to trigger group discussion. Participants identify key principles for managing children's behavior by watching examples of interaction that are positive, negative, or neither. By showing negative examples, the notion of "perfect parenting" is disproved and parents are given the chance to think about and practice alternative strategies that are more effective. The videotapes stimulate group discussion and problem solving, and the leader ensures that the discussion addresses the topic and is understood by all parents. After each vignette, the leader stops the videotape and asks open-ended questions about the scenes. Parents react to and discuss the episodes and develop alternative responses to the incidents portrayed.

• Role-playing and rehearsal. Role-playing and rehearsal of unfamiliar or newly acquired behaviors are commonly used in parent training programs and are effective in changing behavior (Eisler, Hersen, and Agras, 1973; Twentyman and McFall, 1975). Role-playing helps parents anticipate situations more clearly and dramatizes possible consequences of interactions. There are at least four or five brief role-plays during each session. The leader manual and leader training provide helpful strategies for making the role-playing comfortable and useful for parents and leaders.

• Weekly homework activities. Every session also involves a home assignment or activity, which is presented as an integral part of the learning process. The home activities help transfer the learning that takes place in group sessions to real life at home and stimulate discussion at later sessions. Home activities also convey the message that passive involvement in the group will not work magic; parents must work at home to make changes. Parents are provided with The Incredible Years (Webster-Stratton, 1992) and asked to read a chapter each week to prepare for the next session. Audiotapes are provided for those who cannot read. Parents are also asked to observe behaviors at home, record their thoughts and feelings, or try out a parenting strategy. At the start of each session, the leader asks parents to share their experiences with their home activities and reading. The leader can then assess whether parents are integrating the material into their daily lives.

• Weekly evaluations. Parents evaluate each group session by completing a brief weekly evaluation form, which gives the leader immediate feedback about participants' responses to the leader's style, the group discussions, and the content presented in the session. If a parent is dissatisfied or is having trouble with a concept, the leader may want to call that parent to resolve the issue. If the difficulty is shared by others, the leader can bring it up at the next session.

• Phone calls and makeup sessions. The leader calls the parents every 2 weeks to ask how things are going and whether they are having any difficulty with the home assignments. These calls allow the leader and parents to get to know one another outside the group, which is particularly useful in the case of quiet or reluctant parents. These calls also reveal how well parents are assimilating the material presented.

• Buddy calls. The leader creates a group support system by assigning everyone a parent "buddy" in the second session. Buddies are asked to call each other during the week to share progress in home assignments. This assignment is carried out every few weeks throughout the program with different buddies each time. Parents are often initially hesitant about making these calls, but as they experience the support they receive from these phone conversations, they usually express a desire to continue the calls. Many fathers say that this is the first time they have ever talked to another father about parenting. If parents miss a session, buddies call them right away to let them know they were missed and to fill them in on the week's material.

Teachers use videotape modeling, role-playing, and practicing of key points just as parent groups do. For example, teachers are given classroom assignments to practice, such as praising a difficult student, using "proximity praise" during circle time, or setting up a home/school incentive program for an aggressive student. Assignments also include readings from How to Promote Children's Social and Emotional Competence (Webster-Stratton, 1999). During the training, teachers develop behavior plans for targeted students and, by the end of the school year, develop a "transition plan" for students to take to the next grade. The leader supports teachers by calling them regularly and meeting with them individually at the school.

Training and Qualifications of Group Leaders

Group leader certification by the developer of the Incredible Years Training Series is highly recommended and is required if the program is to be evaluated as part of a research program. This certification as a group leader requires successful completion of the following components:

• Application form.

• Three-day training from a certified trainer.

• Successful completion of a minimum of two parent groups (each group lasting 12 sessions).

• Peer review of groups by coleader.

• Satisfactory completion of group leader self-evaluations for each group.

• Satisfactory completion of two coleader peer evaluations for each group.

• Submission of parent weekly evaluations from two groups and final cumulative parent evaluations. (Evaluation materials are provided with program materials.)

• Trainer review of groups by a certified leader who observes onsite or by a certification committee that reviews a videotape of the group.

Once a person has become certified as a group leader, he or she is then eligible to become certified as a mentor of group leaders. Certification as a mentor requires completion of the following components:

• Application form.

• Successful completion of a minimum of three groups. (It is expected that certified mentors will have ongoing groups.)

• Completion of mentor training workshops.

• Completion of leader training groups under the supervision of a certified trainer (or submission of 2-hour videotape of training and evaluations).

• Submission of evaluations from group leaders who are mentored.

• Submission of leader training evaluations.

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The Incredible Years Training Series	Juvenile Justice Bulletin • June 2000