Meaningful student-teacher relationships form a crucial foundation for teachers to deliver effective interventions leading to better outcomes for students with challenging behavior. By implementing simple recommendations for facilitating genuine and intentional interactions with students and regulating their own emotional responses, teachers can…

Premack principle, often referred to as Grandma's law, describes how individuals will perform an arduous or undesirable activity if given access to a desirable activity after the completion of the original task. Premack discovered that highly preferred restricted activities in and of themselves can be reinforcing when preceded by activities that…

Students with persistent and significant challenging behaviors can sometimes be grouped into specific special education classrooms or even specialized schools based on specific disability categories. This practice presents both opportunities and challenges from a school psychologist's perspective. While this approach can allow for more focused…

Strategies for preventing the escalation of problematic student behavior in inclusive school settings are detailed. These strategies include utilizing proactive behavioral interventions, implementing function-based behavioral interventions that address root causes of escalated student behaviors, and teaching and reinforcing socially acceptable…

In this article, we introduce behavior-specific praise as a portable, feasible strategy for teachers and families to increase student engagement as well as to decrease off-task and disruptive behaviors in a variety of environments. We provide step-by-step guidance to illustrate how behavior-specific praise can be used by teachers during in-person…

The function of any behavior (or chain of behaviors) can only be determined by identifying the prevailing antecedent motivating condition (Cipani & Cipani, 2019). The author dubs this antecedent condition the driving force of behavior. What you desire at a particular point in time, if such desire is at a sufficient level, executes two effects.…

Positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) is a widely adopted framework to support the social, emotional, and behavioral growth of all students. This article addresses two key questions related to supporting students with disabilities through PBIS: (a) Why focus on universal classroom PBIS practices?--without support, students with…

A tremendous amount of evidence supports the importance of building relationships between educators and students (Kincaide et al., 2020). Because of this, there is an emerging focus in both research and practice on how student-teacher relationships are assessed, the impact of these relationships on student outcomes, and methods for building and…

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…

In this article, we describe practical, usable ways teachers can build rapport with students, particularly students with and at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders. By establishing rapport, teachers can increase the effectiveness of the social and emotional learning curriculum and interventions delivered. Specifically, the warm welcomes,…

The quality of the relationship that develops between a student and teacher has been connected to pivotal instructional and behavioral outcomes for students. The student-teacher relationship can specifically be harnessed to reduce minor behavioral infractions. However, it is an element of the learning environment that is often overlooked. This…

High-probability request sequence (HPRS) is a low-intensity strategy designed to increase student compliance by creating behavioral momentum. Momentum is established by providing three to five requests that a noncompliant student is most likely to do followed quickly by a less preferred request. Herein, we describe a step-by-step process for using…

Precorrection is a low-intensity strategy that focuses on preventing problem behaviors from occurring by providing reminders for appropriate responding, context modification to support student success, and reinforcement for appropriate responding. In this article, we describe a step-by-step process for using precorrection. Throughout the article,…

Purpose: Many speech-language pathologists (SLPs) experience challenging behaviors during service delivery and also report minimal training in effective behavior management strategies. The purpose of this tutorial is to present low-effort behavior management strategies that SLPs can adopt, adapt, and implement. Method: After providing an overall…

Students with disabilities benefit from positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS; Meyer et al., 2021). The use of school-wide and class-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) shows promise in helping educators to integrate evidence-based practices for the benefit of all students, including those diagnosed with…