In addressing positive general education teaching practices for use with students with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), the chapter emphasizes teacher behavior change research that has been informed by applied behavior analytic (ABA) principles. Its central theme is that general education teachers can access research…

In the past two decades, positive behavior support (PBS) has emerged from applied behavior analysis (ABA) as a newly fashioned approach to problems of behavioral adaptation. ABA was established in the 1960s as a science in which learning principles are systematically applied to produce socially important changes in behavior, whereas PBS was…

The articles in this special Practitioner's Edition of "Psychology in the Schools" share the application of sound educational and behavioral practices in real school and classroom contexts. Given this emphasis in these articles on the applied use of behavioral practices, the purpose of this brief commentary is to highlight and comment on some of…

It is customary in behavior analysis to distinguish between positive and negative reinforcement in terms of whether the reinforcing event involves onset or offset of a stimulus. In a previous article (Baron & Galizio, 2005), we concluded that a distinction of these terms is not only ambiguous but has little if any functional significance. Here, we…

Systems of positive behavior support (PBS) that positively affect student performance involve consensus among stakeholders, the development of environments that facilitate student success, effective teaching of rules and procedures, and consistent consequences for behavior. Evaluation of such systems requires schools to collect data to assess…

This study analyzed specific stimuli reinforcing destructive behavior in two 11-year-olds males with mental retardation and severe destructive behavior problems maintained by attention. The use of concurrent schedules of reinforcement identified alternatives to the reinforcing verbal reprimands and led to development of effective treatments to…