Teachers' knowledge and approaches to supporting preterm children in the classroom

Background & aims

Teachers in the UK receive little training about the long-term consequences of preterm birth on children's development. Our aim was to assess knowledge and elicit suggestions for improving educational practice in the US by means of a mixed-method study.

Methods

246 US teachers (92.7% female) completed the validated Preterm Birth – Knowledge Scale (PB-KS). Of the participating teachers, 50.9% reported professional experience with preterm born children. A representative subsample of 35 teachers responded to a case vignette by describing how they would support the child in the classroom. Answers were coded using thematic content analysis.

Results

Overall, the mean PB-KS score was 15.21 (SD = 5.31). Participating teachers who had professional experience with a preterm child had higher mean PB-KS scores than teachers without (16.95 vs. 15.24, p = .012). Qualitative responses provided specific content for classroom intervention.

Conclusions

Our findings show that US teachers have limited knowledge of the long-term impact of preterm birth. They provided important indicators for the design of targeted classroom interventions to support the learning of preterm children.