Managing student behavior in special education classrooms can be difficult, particularly with students with social-emotional and behavioral challenges. Effective classroom behavior management strategies maximize academic instruction time and decrease disruptive behavior. Tootling is a multicomponent classwide behavior intervention that involves…

This dissertation explores conceptual and methodological issues related to measuring implementation in quantitative educational research. Implementation, defined as the enactment of interventions in educational contexts, plays a pivotal role in understanding how programs operate and affect student outcomes. Despite its importance, there is…

Current literature exists centered on Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) framework, its components, and ways in which MTSS is intended to support all students. Yet, there is a gap in the literature that examines how elementary schools are implementing it. This dissertation study sought to understand what the MTSS framework implementation at…

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across the United States transitioned to some form of emergency remote instruction. Preliminary research suggests that special education services may have been disjointed and many caregivers assumed a primary role in service provision during emergency remote instruction. To extend this work with a…

The current study aimed to assess whether a single-session growth mindset intervention was effective in increasing beliefs in a growth mindset and academic motivation among fifth-grade students. Academic motivation and subsequent achievement tend to show declines with age and increasing difficulty in classes, and this was exacerbated during the…

Restorative justice has become a widely used intervention in urban schools to address the ways that students of color and students with disabilities disproportionately face punitive disciplinary action. As such, understanding the perspectives of teachers of these students is of the utmost importance. Using Dis/ability Critical Race Studies as a…

Teachers working in a special education self-contained classroom were required to implement evidence-based practices and interventions, rarely researched in a school setting, with fidelity to meet the needs of students with intellectual disabilities. Evidence-based practices and interventions for students with intellectual disabilities were…

Treatment fidelity is essential for predicting student outcomes and discerning between intervention ineffectiveness and invalid implementation. Despite its significance, research on treatment fidelity within Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) and Response to Intervention (RTI) frameworks is limited. Despite their moderating role in…

For decades, the fields of early childhood intervention and early childhood special education (EI/ECSE) have been promoting child participation in naturally occurring family and classroom activities and routines as the context for intervention and the use of caregiver coaching as a capacity-building, family-centered interaction style. The…

During 2019 the accreditation of a Catholic school serving students in special education, the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools report recommended implementing a Positive Behavior Intervention Supports program (PBIS). This qualitative case study aimed to build on the growing research on Positive Behavior Intervention Supports and…

In England, Education and Health Care Plans (EHCPs) created changes for SENCOs, including those working in private, voluntary and independent (PVI) early years settings. Such SENCOs hold, as a minimum, a relevant Level-3 qualification, with subsequent training and support being optional, varied and sometimes difficult to access. This situation has…

Naturalistic developmental behavioral intervention (NDBI) strategies appear to be well-suited for implementation by preschool teachers of young children ages 3 through 5, yet research exploring NDBI implementation within this specific context is extremely limited. We applied an implementation science framework to examine reported knowledge,…

Multi-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) is an outgrowth of Response to Intervention (RtI). The various systems of support for students and school communities provided through these programs are integral to modern education and embedded in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) of 2004. While there are many benefits to…

Paraeducators are primary communication partners for children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), but often have limited training. The POWR+ intervention is designed to help paraeducators support their student's communication using AAC. Importantly, POWR+ includes training for supervising teachers, who help implement the…

The autism intervention literature focuses heavily on the concept of evidence-based practice, with less consideration of the acceptability, feasibility, and contextual alignment of interventions in practice. A survey of 130 special educators was conducted to quantify this "social validity" of evidence-based practices and analyze its…