The focus of this doctoral project was to investigate the implementation of a new behavioral management system, Positive Behaviors Intervention and Support (PBIS), by the teaching staff in grades K-6 at a specific school. The aim of PBIS is to create a consistent set of behavior expectations across the entire campus, rather than just within…

Focus groups and interviews can help to determine teachers' perspectives on classroom management. The problem with special education in the United States is that teachers are not prepared for specific classroom challenges, and their perceptions of classroom management have not been thoroughly documented. Gaps in the literature included teachers'…

Child media use with young children has become a more common occurrence in daily life, with parents overseeing the child's media use. During the 2020-22 COVID-19 pandemic, as parents experienced higher levels of stress, child media use increased (Hartshorne et al., 2021). To frame parents' experience of managing children's media use during the…

Students attending school today can have a wide variety of needs in the classroom, both academically and behaviorally. One student group often regarded as challenging to support is students who have an emotional disturbance (ED; see discussion in Algozzine, 2017). Students with an ED usually require a different level of support to be successful at…

By 2024, students of color (i.e., youth who are Black, Latino, Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, American Indian, and multiracial) are projected to represent 56% of the student enrollment in U.S. public schools (Kena et al., 2015). The diversity of our current and future student population merits differentiated strategies to best support…

Students with extensive support needs (ESN) are a heterogenous group of students with the most pervasive and ongoing support needs who typically receive special education services under the categories of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), intellectual disability, or multiple disabilities and often qualify to take their state's alternate assessment…

Disparities in school discipline for Black students has been a problem for decades. The negative effects of exclusionary discipline have been well-documented. This problem must be addressed by educational stakeholders in order to take steps to reduce the issue and provide interventions to reduce the disproportionality. Disproportionality in…

Introduction: The excessive consumption of alcohol by college students is a major public health problem in the U.S. Heavy alcohol use has been linked to numerous consequences ranging from less serious effects (i.e.., hangovers) to death. Decades of research have linked certain beliefs, attitudes or motivations to drinking behavior but intensive…

The purpose of this multiple case study described and compared practices utilized to implement the School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) approach at 3 purposely selected Central California elementary school sites. More specifically, this study described and compared: (a) school practices for defining and teaching school rules/expectations;…

Discursive practices enacted by educators in kindergarten create a blueprint for how the educational trajectories of students with disabilities get constructed. In this two-year ethnographic case study, I critically examine educators' relationships with students considered to present challenging behaviors in one classroom located in a…

This qualitative multiple case study examines how principals contribute to the success of exemplar elementary PBIS schools in North Carolina and how their thoughts about PBIS informed their actions. Guided by the literature on principals and change efforts and sensemaking, this study used individual interviews, focus group interviews, field notes,…