Reinforcement is a fundamental practice in education and is taught to education professionals as a proactive, positive strategy for reducing challenging behavior, increasing desired behavior, and teaching new skills. When students exhibit behavior that impedes learning, a critical component of developing a behavior intervention plan is…

Neoliberalism, after decades of reform, continues to steer educational policies around the world. As private enterprise encroaches public education, schools are held accountable, tangled up in an internationally competitive culture of achieving benchmarks that meet technically managed standards. Not only is it academic performance that is audited…

The causes of dramatic climate change mostly lie in human behavior. Humans cause climate change, for example, by creating waste. Pro-environmental behavior plays a crucial role in fighting climate change by preventing waste and conserving resources. Therefore, schools should foster pro-environmental behavior to fight climate change more…

Concurrent operant assessments (COAs) offer a flexible model for evaluating instructional preferences for students with persistent, escape-motivated interfering behavior. In this article, we define the critical features of COAs and review what types of questions they can address for classroom educators. We then identify and describe a series of…

Social validity refers to the extent to which applied behavior analytic (ABA) treatment goals, methods, and/or outcomes are acceptable and meaningful to stakeholders. The aim of this conceptual paper is to suggest how social validity may be promoted during behavioral consultation in school systems and how the assessment of various aspects of…

The Discrimination Model for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Supervision represents a combined model that integrates six core processes of acceptance commitment therapy (ACT) with the multi-dimensional structure of the Discrimination Model (DM). Based on empirical evidence of ACT and DM, respectively, we present guidelines and case vignettes to…

TikTok has gained in popularity across teachers. One TikTok trend related to classroom management is called "Secret Student." Secret Student aims to improve classroom behavior by rewarding an anonymous, randomly chosen student. In this article, I describe common practices and variations of the Secret Student intervention as well as…

Intervention fidelity is the extent to which an individual- or systems-level student intervention is delivered comprehensively in a manner aligned with the initial plan. This first installment in a three-part series on intervention fidelity highlights the importance of ensuring classroom supports are implemented as intended and introduces…

Research and practice in applied behavior analysis (ABA) have contributed to the education of students with autism and other intellectual or developmental disabilities in school settings across a wide variety of efforts, including but not limited to, academic instruction (Delano, 2007), addressing behaviors restricting a student's environments and…

The recommendations outlined in this article focus on research-based approaches to (a) establishing a healthy teacher-paraeducator relationship and (b) planning for and providing feedback on behavior intervention plans (BIP) implementation, both of which have been found to support teacher-paraeducator collaboration and implementation of effective…

Riding the school bus can be an especially challenging time of the school day for students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBDs). Behavior contingency contracts are an effective, evidence-based intervention that can be used to support students in less structured settings. In rural school settings, where long bus routes are common,…

This paper describes the implementation of Check In Check Out (CICO) as an evidence-based practice to support students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) within educational settings. CICO, a Tier 2 intervention of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), has garnered attention for its effectiveness in enhancing students'…

We discuss the use of two empirically validated behavior-change methods--checklists and goal setting--and designed a checklist to assist behavior analysts in improving their behavioral services to be more culturally responsive and trauma informed. We also present pilot data evaluating the use of the checklist and goal setting on the inclusion of…

During their early years, children with autism may not meet the same communication and language milestones as their peers (Wodka et al., 2013). Many children with autism experience language delays and may rely on one-word or phrase speech, rather than using grammatically fluent speech (Anderson et al., 2007; Wodka et al., 2013) that is often…

Problem behavior disrupts classrooms across the United States, impacting student learning. Despite the adverse consequences, teachers often exclude disruptive students from school as a punitive and default response to problem behavior. Alternatives to exclusion are becoming increasingly popular in many school districts to improve behavior and keep…