"Early-Stage Interventions: Behavior Strategies for Every Teacher" offers a set of simple, teacher-friendly interventions to use as a starting place in addressing an individual student's chronic misbehavior-- disrespect, noncompliance, lack of motivation, bullying, aggression, and more. Though every teacher will encounter students who…

When results of descriptive functional behavior assessments are unclear, hypothesis testing can help school teams understand how the classroom environment affects a student's challenging behavior. This article describes two hypothesis testing strategies that can be used in classroom settings: structural analysis and functional analysis. For each…

Teachers face the challenging job of differentiating instruction for the diverse needs of their students. This task is difficult enough with happy students who are eager to learn; unfortunately students often enter the classroom in a bad mood because of events that happened outside the classroom walls. These events--called setting events--can…

The call for effective instructional and classroom management is frequent within the professional literature. However, type, amount, and sequence of strategies sufficient to impact rates of problem behavior are often missing or listed with limited guidance on differentiation based on student pattern of problem behavior. The purpose of this study…

The author considers the application of transactional analysis (TA) in the field of education. Initially, the focus is on the use of TA in reducing conflict in the classroom and staffroom before offering observations about its broader relevance to contemporary UK schooling. Concepts covered include the egostate model of personality, functional…

Psychological science has identified positive classroom management and climate building strategies as a key element in developing and maintaining effective learning environments. In this article, we review the literature that has identified effective strategies that build classroom climates to maximize student learning and minimize disruption. In…

Many factors cause student disengagement from school that subsequently result in high dropout rates. Alternative education (AE) programs provide a different pathway for at-risk youths who do not meet the goals, standards, and requirements of traditional educational settings. However, educational agencies have vastly different interpretations…

Peer-related social competencies can have a major impact on classroom success. While some students can learn these social competencies through observation and imitation of others, other students require intensive intervention in social skills to be able to interact appropriately with others. This article presents social narratives as a behavioral…

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been shown to benefit from being educated in general education classrooms that provide interactions with typically developing peers. However, behaviors exhibited by students with ASD frequently lead to their return to segregated special education settings. Evidence-based interventions that are both…

When, despite their best efforts, teachers feel defeated by a disruptive student, it seems they're fighting a losing battle. These students often have trouble regulating their emotions, become inflexible and have outbursts, and leave teachers feeling exhausted and incompetent. Through their collaboration, the authors have developed an approach…

The author's 40 years as an educator have led him to an important insight: stress is crippling the schools. On top of other extreme conditions in schools and on students, there is the pressure to achieve and succeed in a fast-paced, chaotic world. This pervasive stress compromises the physical health, and in turn the cognitive and psychological…

Notwithstanding the wealth of research that documents the effectiveness of self-management programs in the classroom, few investigations have explored classwide use of self-management procedures as a universal intervention. To extend existing research in this area, we examined the effectiveness of a classwide self-management intervention for…

The prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)--a group of developmental disabilities that cause severe problems with socialization, behavior, and communication--continues to grow. In 2008, the year that "Odyssey" focused on autism, the estimated prevalence of ASD for hearing children was 1 in 150 (CDC, 2007), while today estimates suggest…

In a "Young Children" article worth revisiting, Wien (2004) makes the case that rules tend not to be helpful in early childhood communities. Rules are usually stated as negatives. When an adult enforces rules with children, the children know they have done something wrong. However, the negative experience in rule enforcement does not teach them…

The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of self-management as a tier two enhancement to the group contingency intervention, Class-Wide Function-related Intervention Teams Program (CW-FIT). Two classrooms, first and fourth grade, and two students in each of the classrooms participated in the intervention. The group contingency…