Many individuals with dementia and problem behavior are served in nursing home settings long before health issues necessitate constant medical care. Alternative community-based adult day health care programs allow individuals with dementia to remain in their home with their families at a substantially reduced cost; however, many adult day programs…

The delta-plot method (Angoff, 1972) is a graphical technique used in the context of test equating for identifying common items with aberrant changes in their item difficulties across administrations or alternate forms. This brief research report explores the effects on equated aggregate scores when delta-plot outliers are either retained in or…

The Early Learning Guidelines: Nebraska's Birth to Five Learning and Development Standards (hereafter referred to as the Guidelines) is a resource to provide information about young children's learning and development. The Guidelines are intended to assist adults in planning and providing meaningful learning experiences and environments for…

The impacts of violence for young children and their caregivers are multidimensional. The story of 2-year-old Tyronne, his mother, Josephine, and his father, James, illustrates the use of a relationship-focused treatment, child-parent psychotherapy (CPP), in addressing the traumatic consequences of exposure to violence. This family's story…

Schools in Maryland and Connecticut are rethinking suspension policies and practices. They are finding that promoting positive behavior choices rather than punishing the negative is leading to higher graduation rates, especially among students of color. In the 2003-2004 academic year, Baltimore City Public Schools recorded 26,000 suspensions. Six…

Teachers report that the behaviors that they are forced to deal with on a daily basis are not typically violent or intense but are frequent and usurp great amounts of instructional time. Office discipline referrals provide a well-established method of tracking student behavior problems across the school, allowing for deeper analysis of contextual…

Reflective supervision is a relationship-based practice that supports the professional development of early childhood practitioners. Reflective supervision helps practitioners cope with the intense feelings and stress that are generated when working with at-risk children and families. It allows them to focus on the purpose and goals of the program…

Adopted children may present with a wide range of disruptive behaviors making it difficult to implement holistic therapeutic interventions. The number of primary caregivers, disrupted placements, and repeated traumatic events contribute to the overall mental health of the adoptee and greater number of occurrences increases the risk of…

Demonstrations of school-based experimental functional analyses have received limited attention within the literature. School settings present unique practical and ethical concerns related to the implementation of experimental analyses which were originally developed within clinical settings. Recent examples have made definite contributions toward…

Academic skills are frequent concerns in K-12 schools that could benefit from the application of applied behavior analysis (ABA). Brief experimental analysis (BEA) of academic performance is perhaps the most promising approach to apply ABA to student learning. Although research has consistently demonstrated the effectiveness of academic…

Early adolescence is the period where the transition from child to adult takes place gradually. A major physical and cognitive change during this period is accompanied by social and emotional development. The growth spurt in this period makes them stronger and plays an important role in developing self identities. The journey through this crucial…

Too much speaking and indiscipline in class is an on-going problem for any teacher, it is at its least disruptive and at most it destroys a good positive classroom atmosphere. This article recognizes this and continues this debate and suggests key clues to support teachers in their efforts to maintain a positive classroom atmosphere and discipline…

It can be difficult for any teacher to support a child whose behavior is disruptive, but a language barrier can certainly complicate the situation. Children who are new to English may not be able to tell teachers what's going on. This makes it even more important for teachers to learn specific strategies to interpret the child's actions and plan…

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,…

Professionals dealing with challenging behavior frequently operate detached from the other relationships in the child's life. This narrow approach has been called the unilateral strategy based on the belief that the child's outside world can be ignored and behavior can be changed by administering specific corrective interventions. In contrast,…