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…

Within the context of a multi-tiered framework for behavior support, intervention intensification is warranted when a Tier II intervention fails to adequately address a targeted behavior. A traditional approach to intensification is to shift from standardized supports at Tier II to individualized and more resource-intensive supports at Tier III.…

During a school day, children make several transitions between activities, which can take away from instructional time and result in challenging behaviors. This study investigates the impact positive engagement and behavioral supports have on children's behavior while transitioning. Participants (N = 40; 77.5% Male; 92.5% Hispanic) were enrolled…

Class-wide Function-related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT) is a classroom management intervention in which teachers incorporate positive behavior support (PBS) principles by teaching specific classroom expectations and providing feedback on student behavior as part of an interdependent group contingency. Interventions like CW-FIT may be helpful for…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

The only consistency with children, with and without disabilities, is that they are inconsistent. Much of a child's behavior is adult controlled by their reaction, methods used, and consistency in support and discipline. When adults change the way they respond to the child's behaviors, the child gradually will learn to modify their behavior.…

This exploratory study expands the literature on teachers' natural use of praise and reprimand, in terms of how teachers deliver praise and reprimand. Sixty-six middle and high school teachers' delivery of praise and reprimand to individual, small groups, and large groups during a 20-min observation were examined. Teachers delivered significantly…

The present study was designed to extend research on supplementing social skills training (SST) with a Tootling intervention to enhance student performance of social skills in authentic social contexts. The Tootling intervention included an interdependent group contingency with randomly selected criteria, which involved the after-school class…