Schoolteachers worldwide continue to encounter challenging behavior in their classrooms. As a result, teacher preparation programs are receiving more scrutiny regarding how well they are preparing their teacher candidates to effectively address challenging behavior especially in line with the principles of whole schooling. The overarching purpose…

Students with extensive support needs are at risk of demonstrating challenging behavior due to inadequate support of their individual needs or class-wide factors such as low quality of instruction. Students with extensive support needs are also among the students who are most likely to experience aversive interventions and be placed in segregated…

This dissertation contains two studies that examine family therapy services within public schools related to behavioral or discipline concerns. Both studies stem from an ecological and family systems theoretical framework in examining relationships between the student, family, and school systems. The first study is a scoping review on family…

Although the number of U.S. schools implementing multitiered systems of support for behavior (MTSS-B) continues to grow, most schools have still not adopted these evidence-based frameworks. We examined the views of educators (N = 561) at the outset of adopting MTSS-B in their schools or districts. Our survey addressed the (a) reasons schools and…

Unsafe and violent schools are a widespread problem in South Africa. This paper argues that Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) contribute to this phenomenon. While various individual and community-level interventions to address ACEs have been reported on, the contribution of safe parks towards preventing school violence has not yet been…

School tip lines, which are structured systems that allow students, parents, school staff, or community members to report information about potential threats, are a promising approach to school safety. Tip lines, which focus on preventing incidents that are threats to school safety or student well-being, come in various forms, including computer…

Occupational therapy practitioners provide sensory-based interventions to support children as they learn academically, develop self-regulation skills, and participate in play and activities of daily living skills alongside their peers. These interventions are used both for children who have a specific sensory-related diagnosis as well as children…

Despite widespread enthusiasm for remedial education programming with refugee populations, there is little rigorous evidence on how to design and implement such programs. We employ a cluster-randomized design of non-equivalent treatment groups to test the impact of access to two types of program enhancement: longer program duration and the…

While research suggests that social emotional competencies (SECs) influence students' disciplinary outcomes, less is known of their potential to explain racial disparities or grade level differences in those outcomes. This study used survey and administrative data from 30,494 students in grades 3-12 to examine the degree to which SECs were related…

This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue of Prevention Science entitled, "Innovations and Applications of Integrative Data Analysis (IDA) and Related Data Harmonization Procedures in Prevention Science." This special issue includes a collection of original papers from multiple disciplines that apply individual-level data…

Students with extensive support needs (ESN) have an increased risk of engaging in challenging behavior due to a range of factors, including communication and health needs common among this student population. When students engage in behaviors that impede learning, school teams organize support across social and emotional domains to ensure access…

Objective: Despite evidence-based interventions for the psychiatric disorders that often precede suicidality, suicide remains a leading cause of death among youth. There has been increased interest in whether preventive interventions targeting early risk factors lead to decreased distal risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB). We examined…

Conventional punitive detention- and suspension-based correctional approaches to student disruptive behavior are widely considered ineffective and counterproductive. Instead of offering opportunities for change and growth, they punish students they deem incorrigible by excluding them from instruction. While effective alternative approaches and…

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe experiences of dialectical behavior therapy for special education teachers at a large, suburban school district in the Southeast United States. The theory guiding this study was Bandura's social cognitive theory (SCT), as it explains how new behaviors are learned and…

Behavior intervention plans (BIPs) are intended to help educators systematically support students with behavioral problems at school. Previous research confirms that the effectiveness of a BIP depends on the degree to which the plan is technically adequate and implemented with integrity. What remains unclear from the literature is how professional…