Soft Skills for Incoming Pre-K Aides

Abstract

Pre-K aides work alongside Pre-K teachers in the classroom to help support the teacher and the students in everyday tasks. Pre-K aides, also known as Educational Assistants, Classroom Support or Classroom Aides, help the classroom be productive and efficient. New and incoming Pre-K aides are often unfamiliar with the skills necessary to be an asset to the Pre-K classroom. This project aimed to address this need through instruction for new and incoming Pre-K aides on soft skills needed to succeed in the Pre-K classroom. The online asynchronous instructional course was evaluated through a usability study (n=3) and an asynchronous learning effectiveness study (n=15). The usability study showed a need to improve the navigation. Learning effectiveness participants were individuals with prior experience with Pre-K students either in or out of the classroom setting. This impacted the learning effectiveness study results as instructional information was already known to them. Although this was the case, a portion of the study showed a 20% increase between the pre and post-test scores. The results and feedback suggest that participants were able to learn from the instruction and gained confidence about Pre-K soft skills and their use in the Pre-K classroom.