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…

Within the context of a multi-tiered framework for behavior support, intervention intensification is warranted when a Tier II intervention fails to adequately address a targeted behavior. A traditional approach to intensification is to shift from standardized supports at Tier II to individualized and more resource-intensive supports at Tier III.…

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…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between externalizing behavior and peer reputations of kindergarten through third-grade students (N = 35, from 18 classrooms) with or at risk for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBDs). We also examined the extent to which this relation varied as a function of teacher delivery of praise. A…

Supporting parents in foundational positive behavior support strategies for use with their child is a commonly employed method to improve child behavior in natural contexts, including the home. Parents have learned and implemented a variety of strategies with integrity; however, there is limited research regarding the maintenance of skills.…

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.…

Behavior-specific praise is an evidenced-based and effective classroom and behavior management strategy. Despite the effectiveness of behavior-specific praise, low rates of classroom implementation and expressed needs for additional professional learning on classroom and behavior management strategies persist. School leaders can use existing staff…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders exhibit high levels of inappropriate behaviors. Although many teachers are aware of the benefits of teacher praise, its use in classrooms remains low. Training students to recruit praise is a method to counter suppressing contingencies and increase praise rates for desired classroom behaviors. With…

A traditional tootling procedure was implemented along with a public posting component to determine the effects on academically engaged, disruptive, and passive off-task behaviors in four general education high school classrooms. Students in the traditional tootling phase were instructed to report on their peers' positive, prosocial behaviors. At…

Middle school is a cornerstone for success in high school. However, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement of adolescents often decline as they transition from elementary to middle school, resulting in lower school grades and more challenging behaviors, especially for adolescents with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders…

The prevalence of students with behavioral problems who also have learning problems has been reported to be as high as 50% (Glassberg et al. "Behavioral Disorders," 25, 9-21, 1999). In the current study, we progressively evaluated the effects of positive reinforcement, instructional strategies, and, if needed, negative reinforcement on…

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…