The purpose of this study was to examine whether the use of a prompting technique increased pre-school teachers' use of behavior-specific praise (BSP) statements. Two early childhood teachers participated in the study; one served children aged three to four years, the other four to five years. Both classes consisted of students from low income…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify which skillsets a successful teacher possesses to help students positively work through behavioral situations rather than immediately exit the student from the classroom. The common themes could allow school leaders to reflect, develop, or improve current strategies for helping teachers develop…

Functional communication training, an intervention for challenging behavior rooted in principles of applied behavior analysis, has copious empirical support dating back to the mid-1980s for autistic individuals. Recently, there has been a concerted effort to thin reinforcement delivery during functional communication training using…

The present study aimed to identify a way for educators to improve the accuracy of their praise and reprimand reflections to ultimately improve their ability to set, monitor, and evaluate their use of praise and reprimand. To do this, teachers' natural use of praise and reprimand (in the absence of intervention) were compared with their perceived…

Objective: School Health Profiles (Profiles) is a national surveillance system operated by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A school-based system of surveys, Profiles monitors school health policies and practices in US states and other jurisdictions through questionnaires completed by school principals and lead health education…

Although evidence-based practices for improving academic engagement for students with emotional and/or behavioral disorders (EBD) have been identified, many teachers do not implement these practices with optimal fidelity. Thus, effective strategies are needed to improve teacher fidelity. Performance feedback is an effective professional…

This qualitative action research study examined the SAGES academic coaching program, a pilot program for first-year students who identify as having a disability. The study focused on the student-coach relationship and goal setting during coaching. Five students and three coaches participated in the study. I observed one coaching session for each…

While much has been written about how principals motivate their teachers, there is a surprising paucity of research on what motivates principals themselves. Because a principal significantly impacts the academic achievement of students and because principal turnover disproportionately impacts low-income schools, it is imperative that we find a way…

The purpose of this study is to investigate three elementary preservice teachers' (PSTs') conceptions of and reflections on the role of perseverance in mathematics. This study presents findings regarding the PSTs' perseverance conceptions, student interactions, and the PSTs reflections from a two-week summer math camp in which they assisted in…

This article provides an overview of how reinforcement serves as the foundation for a function-based approach to support students with challenging behavior. Understanding reinforcement is essential when providing function-based support for students with challenging behavior. Reinforcement "strengthens" behavior, increasing the…

The present study investigates the effects of different kinds of praise on 108 students in vocational education, using a similar design as the original mindset studies. Students worked on a set of Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices and either received praise for effort, received praise for intelligence, or were in the control group. Results…

The current experiment is a systematic replication of previous studies that evaluated the efficiency of echoic and tact prompts on the acquisition of intraverbals (i.e., French-to-English translations) following exposure to each prompt type. We extended these studies by (a) evaluating participants' language skills on standardized assessments, (b)…

Teaching with acoustical guidance involves auditory feedback (e.g., a click sound when a desired behavior occurs) as part of a multicomponent intervention known as TAGteach. TAGteach has been found to improve performance in sport, dance, surgical technique, and walking. We compared the efficacy and efficiency of the standard TAGteach…

Behavior-specific praise (BSP) is a low-intensity strategy widely used to encourage appropriate behavior. We sought to explore the vast literature base for BSP, which spans 50 years, to better understand for whom and under what conditions BSP has demonstrated effectiveness. We conducted a comprehensive review of school-based intervention studies…

Co-teaching is a prevalent model to address student needs in an inclusive classroom, therefore it is critical that both the general and special education teacher are implementing high leverage and evidence-based practices. The present study used peer coaching in an elementary co-taught classroom to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers' use of…