This article extends Dr. Bob Remington's call for collaborations between those supporting behavioral approaches and those supporting more natural developmental approaches to beginning communication intervention. This article expands areas previously discussed by Dr. Remington. Topics that are addressed include pivotal behaviors that may facilitate…

Teachers of young children with moderate to significant support needs may have insufficient training to implement naturalistic instructional practices such as contingent responding. Naturalistic instructional practices are well researched, but limited studies exist on training teachers to use contingent responses to support children increasing…

Class-wide Function-related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT) is a classroom management intervention in which teachers incorporate positive behavior support (PBS) principles by teaching specific classroom expectations and providing feedback on student behavior as part of an interdependent group contingency. Interventions like CW-FIT may be helpful for…

Research has suggested that students from underserved and underrepresented backgrounds (e.g., students of color and those with disabilities) have received higher rates of exclusionary discipline (e.g., suspensions and expulsions) than their peers who are White and without disability. Various interventions have been implemented to address this…

Functional communication training, an intervention for challenging behavior rooted in principles of applied behavior analysis, has copious empirical support dating back to the mid-1980s for autistic individuals. Recently, there has been a concerted effort to thin reinforcement delivery during functional communication training using…

This article provides an overview of how reinforcement serves as the foundation for a function-based approach to support students with challenging behavior. Understanding reinforcement is essential when providing function-based support for students with challenging behavior. Reinforcement "strengthens" behavior, increasing the…

An ABAB design was used to analyze the effects of positive peer reporting plus a randomized dependent group contingency (PPR + DGC). This intervention package was implemented across three classrooms in an alternative school setting for students diagnosed with emotional and behavioral disorders. The DGC consisted of the teacher randomly choosing a…

Self-management has been found to be favorable for improving a wide variety of skills as well as decreasing problematic behaviors in individuals with a range of disabilities. We used a single case withdrawal design to investigate the use of a self-management intervention on problem behaviors of a nine-year-old Native American child with fetal…

This study evaluated use of the Caught Being Good Game (CBGG) across two adolescent student populations, maintaining a focus on the provision of feedback during the game. The CBGG, a variation of the group contingency intervention the Good Behavior Game (GBG), is a classroom management intervention that involves the provision of points to teams of…

Behavior contracts, also known as contingency contracts, have been used as a behavioral strategy for decades (Allen et al., 1993; Bowman-Perrott et al., 2015). Originating from the field of applied behavioral analysis, behavior contracts define behavioral expectations and specify contingent rewards for displaying target behaviors (Cooper et al.,…

An increasing number of students with emotional and behavioral disorders are being served in general education environments. This article provides general and special education teachers with step-by-step instructions in three classroom management strategies that, when implemented well, can increase academic engagement and reduce challenging…

Teachers are responsible for providing an education to students of all ability levels. Recent data suggest that roughly 95% of students with a disability are receiving some form of education in their general education setting. Individuals with disabilities tend to engage in higher levels of disruptive behaviors (e.g., talking out in class,…

Using an ABAB withdrawal design, the study evaluated the direct and generalized effects of a combined independent and interdependent group contingency on the engagement and disruptive behavior of two groups of students enrolled in an alternative school serving students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Class 1 included seven middle school…

Cognitive flexibility refers to various processes which enable behaviors to be modified on the basis of a change in the contingencies between stimuli or responses and their associated outcomes. Reversal learning is a form of cognitive flexibility which measures the ability to adjust responding based on a switch in the stimulus--outcome…

Group contingencies have been indicated to be effective in reducing disruptive behavior and increasing academic engagement in school settings. Previous research has demonstrated their efficacy with a wide range of student ages, but there have been few studies with older students who engage in severe disruptive behavior. In the current study, we…