Managing challenging student behaviors can be difficult for any educator. Lacking knowledge of research-based, positively oriented behavior interventions, educators may resort to punitive, reactive disciplinary strategies. Mindfulness is a positive, proactive approach that may help students with emotional and behavioral disorders improve their…

This article discusses the use of behavior-specific praise (BSP), an effective technique for promoting prosocial behavior and managing classrooms. It addresses the criticism that BSP may reduce students' intrinsic motivation and offers directions on how to use BSP to provide students, especially those with challenging behaviors, with useful…

Positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) is a means to proactively address student behavior in all school settings. Misbehavior on the school bus can lead to issues with safety, carry over to school and home, and hinder at-risk students' academic success. Students' behavior can be supported on the bus through the implementation of a…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD) may exhibit both learning and behavioral needs that affect the teacher's ability to provide effective instruction. Extending beyond simple academic content knowledge, effective teacher-based interventions include preventive and predictive actions that manage the disruptive behaviors often…

Many schools today have a prevention-based focus for working with academic and social behavior problems through the use of tiered approaches (Bohanon, McIntosh, & Goodman, 2011; Horner & Sugai, 2005). Through the use of levels of support, including a continuum of increasingly intensive support based on responsiveness to evidence-based core…

Maintaining a positive classroom environment that will encourage learning is a challenge, particularly in classes that require frequent interventions due to students' disruptive behaviors. Punitive disciplinary reactions are generally ineffective when responding to students who are frequently disruptive. More importantly, negative teacher…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD) have academic, behavioral, and social characteristics that present unique needs within schools. Educators across the country are responding to the academic, behavioral, and social needs of all students, including students with E/BD, by implementing a continuum of supports across a…

Easy-to-use progress-monitoring and intervention techniques are attractive because most teachers are crunched for time and teacher instructional time is often consumed with paperwork, especially for progress monitoring and discipline. Some studies indicate up to 50% of a special educator's time may be spent on paperwork. Methods that serve a dual…

Concern about using evidence-based practices to improve outcomes is not new. The same concern, described as the need to bridge the "research to practice gap," was expressed in special education more than 40 years ago. Despite continuing efforts to use the best information available to improve outcomes, the process occurs very slowly. Collectively,…

Ask just about any teacher what the most challenging aspect of their job is and, most likely, one of the first answers one will get is "student behaviors!" To date, very little current research has examined the impact of specific challenging behaviors on teachers' job satisfaction. In other words, terms such as "challenging behavior" and…

Generally, teachers are good students. Most know how to successfully address a variety of academic tasks demands. Many know how to compensate for any personal weaknesses they have with specific skills. Sometimes teachers are such good students that they forgot what it was like to struggle to learn something. Unfortunately, students with emotional…

Sometimes educators are puzzled by how students can demonstrate a social skill perfectly during a practice session in a social skills curriculum but fail to use the same skill in real-life situations. Students with a lack of social skills are more likely to experience teacher and peer rejection, and are more at risk for negative life outcomes,…

According to the National Center for Education Statistics' latest data on cross-national differences in math, science, and reading literacy among fourth- and eighth-graders and 15-year-olds, U.S. students rank close to the bottom in math. Just teaching more advanced subjects and forcing students to take more classes and do more homework, however,…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) experience difficulty in the educational environment at two levels: behaviorally and academically. Behavioral and academic problems in students with EBD are reciprocal in nature. Behavioral problems may cause a disruption in academic engagement, including a student's attending to instruction,…

Research has demonstrated that well-integrated computer-assisted instruction can have positive effects on student achievement, attitudes, and self-esteem. In this article, the authors summarize a project that focused on increasing students' positive social behavior by providing better context to the instruction and using technology as the teaching…