This article reviews eight comprehensive social-emotional curricula for children under age 6 and describes two promising curricula currently under investigation. These programs have been successful in the promotion of interpersonal skills and the reduction or prevention of challenging behavior. Attention is given to the level of evidence or…

This article examines peer intervention as a strategy for modifying disruptive behavior in inclusive classrooms, focusing on the method known as peer confrontation. A vignette of this method's application to reduce the incidence of verbal abuse in a regular classroom is provided, and implications of peer mediation for inclusive schooling are…

Four students (ages 4-6) with developmental disabilities who exhibited challenging behaviors in teaching situations were exposed to high intensity and low intensity social interaction in a play situation and a task situation. Interaction intensity made no difference in students' behavior. Two students exhibited task avoidance and two exhibited…

Analysis of social competence and problem behaviors for 164 special education students in grades K-3, using the Social Skills Rating System, found weak to moderate relationships between parents' and teachers' ratings. Gender comparisons revealed mixed findings. Results provide evidence for the instrument's convergent validity and suggest that…

Discusses the causes of biting behavior and techniques that parents and educators can use to manage biting toddlers. Notes that solutions need to consider the developmental level and needs of the child, the influence of the child's environment, and the role of adults in the child's life. (MDM)

The Walker-McConnell Scale of Social Competence and School Adjustment is intended for screening and identifying elementary-aged school children with social skill deficits. The instrument is divided into two components covering adaptive classroom behavior and interpersonal social skills. This paper describes the test's administration, summation of…

Contends that students who have been referred by teachers for behavioral problems, lack of social skills, or poor academic performance should be interviewed by school counselors and invited to join new group being formed to develop and practice friendship skills. Discusses how to organize such a group, and presents 15 group steps. (NB)

Examined correlates of aggression in highly stressed urban children in second and third grade and again in third through fifth grade. Found that difficult temperament and lack of parental warmth related to aggression in early grades; learning problems and poor social skills related to aggression at both times. Early aggression predicted later…

Assessed psychometric properties of the Ages and Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional (ASQ:S-E), a screening instrument for 3- to 63-month-olds. Found that internal consistency was generally high. Test-retest reliability between parents' classifications was .94. Overall sensitivity was .82; overall specificity was .92. Parents reported easy…

Examined psychometric properties of the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales with preschoolers. Found that cross- informant correlations were poor for social skills, low for internalizing behaviors, and modest for externalizing behaviors. Parents and teachers rated boys as having more externalizing behaviors than girls. Parents identified…

One difficulty of evaluating after-school programs is that providers often lack resources necessary to employ rigorous evaluation designs. One strategy is to investigate the relationship between attendance and outcomes while covarying for important potentially confounding variables. The current study investigates the influence of after-school…

Teacher ratings of 336 preschool children (mean age = 48 months) attending two urban Head Start programs were collected to examine the influence of contextual variables of teacher training, classroom, and site on the prevalence of significant problems. The prevalence of externalizing behaviors in the "problem range" was higher than expected and…

This paper is a report of a singe-subject reading intervention that was conducted as part of a larger study. The subject's pre-test scores were too low to meet the criterion for including his results in the larger study (Ashcroft, 2004), but he was allowed to participate in an individualized version of the treatment. Because S's social and reading…

The relationship between specific subtypes of speech language impairment (SLI) and concomitant social competence and behavioral adjustment was investigated. Teachers and parents completed behavior ratings of SLI preschoolers enrolled in a language-based intervention program and preschoolers without language impairment, including the Parent-Child…

In many middle schools, poor student lunchtime behaviour is an ongoing problem. Such behaviour can have a detrimental effect on a school's climate and culture, which can in turn degrade the quality of learning that occurs in the classroom. As a result, improving students' lunchtime behaviour should be a priority for staff. One solution is to make…