Early childhood educators often lack adequate preparation in the delivery of evidence-based practices. However, providing preservice teachers with ongoing implementation support during field-based training experiences may serve to occasion evidence-based practice delivery when they enter the field of early childhood education. Using a concurrent…

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…

Classroom management can be a significant challenge for teachers, especially novice teachers who report classroom management as their highest need for professional development. School districts are often left with the burden of providing such professional development but typically need more time and resources to provide extensive coaching. There…

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…

This exploratory study extends the literature on teachers' stress and self-efficacy in relation to behavior management. Sixty-six middle and high school teachers' use of praise and reprimand during a 20-min observation, in the general education setting, were examined. Following the observation, teachers completed stress and self-efficacy scales,…

Without effective support, students with disabilities experience more exclusionary discipline and benefit less from classroom instruction. Students with disabilities can benefit when teachers implement key classroom positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) practices (e.g., prompts, opportunities to respond, and specific praise), but…

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…

Inappropriate mealtime behavior (IMB) is a type of feeding challenge within the broader class of food refusal. The purpose of this study was to critically analyze the efficacy of interventions for the treatment of IMB through a meta-analysis of research using single-case experimental designs. We examined the extent to which different interventions…

Novice teachers are more likely than their more experienced counterparts to leave the field teaching, which further exacerbates the national teacher shortage. This creates a need to take concerted steps to prepare and retain novice teachers. The Every Student Succeeds Act emphasizes using evidence-based classroom and behavior management practices…

Behavior-specific praise is a research-based classroom management strategy that promotes appropriate student behaviors. Praise specificity, however, may not be the only characteristic of praise that enhances efficacy. The current study examined teacher's natural use of specific, contingent, and varied praise to understand additional qualities of…

A tremendous amount of evidence supports the importance of building relationships between educators and students (Kincaide et al., 2020). Because of this, there is an emerging focus in both research and practice on how student-teacher relationships are assessed, the impact of these relationships on student outcomes, and methods for building and…

Behavior specific praise (BSP) is widely regarded as an evidence-based classroom management strategy, with decades of research supporting its use. However, relatively few studies have examined the effect of BSP as a "targeted" intervention strategy, particularly for traditionally underrepresented students. The present study evaluated the…

Effective use of classroom management practices is critical to creating positive classroom climates supporting students' academic and behavioral outcomes, and teachers in rural areas have a strong need for training in classroom management. One classroom management practice with significant support is behavior-specific praise (BSP). Research shows…

Research has demonstrated that behavior specificity is a salient characteristic of teacher praise efficacy. Praise variety may also be an important characteristic to reinforce desired student behavior based on research about the quality of reinforcers. In this study, we used an alternating treatments design to examine the effects of varied and…

This article discusses the use of behavior-specific praise (BSP), an effective technique for promoting prosocial behavior and managing classrooms. It addresses the criticism that BSP may reduce students' intrinsic motivation and offers directions on how to use BSP to provide students, especially those with challenging behaviors, with useful…