Mentoring is an intervention growing in popularity with a weak research foundation. This study combines mentoring and social skill training within a positive behavior support framework. Targeting a fourth-grade, Latino student at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders, this single-subject study looks at his ability to master a specific social skill. The mentor served to reinforce social skill learning through practicing, role-playing, and goal setting. The student was chosen using the Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders and the social skill was created using the School Social Behavior Scales that identified social skill strengths and weaknesses. Student demonstration of the social skill was monitored two to three times each week. The student made progress toward mastery, but did not fully master the social skill. Additionally, pre- and post-School Social Behavior Scales showed increased social skill competency and decreased anti-social behaviors during the five-month mentoring intervention. Results indicated that short-term mentoring positively influenced the student's general level of social competency but was not sufficient for the mastery of the selected social skill.

This study was conducted to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of a second tier intervention on at risk students' behaviors and academic success. The study included 113 middle school and junior high students identified as being at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders using the Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD). The participants were assigned to a control group (no treatment), one, two, or three semesters of the intervention. The intervention integrated components of social skills instruction, self-management techniques, and social and emotional awareness. Students' behaviors and academic success were measured using school data (i.e. GPA, Office Discipline Referrals, attendance, and tardies) and Achenbach Teacher Rating Forms (TRF), in pretest-posttest intervention designs over a five-year period. This research used archival data funded in part by an OSEP Federal Grant (H324c030124). Primary investigator was K. Richard Young and co-primary investigator was Ellie L. Young. Results indicated that students receiving the intervention did not differ significantly from the control group in all areas measured.

As more schools turn to School-Wide Positive Behavior Supports (SWPBS) for help with academic and problem behaviors in their schools, the need to adequately evaluate these programs on a socially relevant level increases. The present study employs social validation measures to evaluate Utah's Academic, Behavioral & Coaching Initiative (ABC-UBI), a Positive Behavior Support (PBS) initiative, on socially relevant issues. Participants from across the state of Utah who were active consumers of ABC-UBI's program, were polled for their opinion on the acceptability of the treatment goals, procedures and outcomes of the program. The results outlined several areas of much needed improvement including, but not limited to the amount of paperwork required for successful implementation and the usability of program procedures. Social validity continues to be an important construct to consider when evaluating programs for social relevancy.

Praise has been found to be an effective promoter of positive school and classroom environments and is used commonly by school adults to promote positive behavior among students. Praise can be given using many different methods; the method studied in this research project was praise notes. As part of a school-wide Positive Behavior Support program, faculty and staff from an elementary school were encouraged to write praise notes to students, identifying targeted positive behaviors. Over a 2-year time period, 2,839 notes were collected, examined for the content of the praise, and further examined according to recipient's gender. This study of praise notes was completed to determine if school adults provided more praise notes or different types of praise to male and female students. The findings showed that the school adults at the research setting were gender fair in the praise that they gave. They did not praise one gender more than would be expected, given the population; however, males were praised more than females in two areas: responsibility and cleaning. It appears from this population that school adults may have praised students for non-typical gender behaviors in order to promote positive behavior in their classrooms and school.

This study is a summary of themes found in the meeting notes of school teams implementing school-wide Positive Behavior Support. Positive Behavior Support (PBS) is a systems change process of reorganizing a school's discipline structure to put in place a positive, teaching and reinforcing focus for the improvement of student behavior (Sugai & Horner, 2006). In recent years, education researchers have established that school-wide PBS is an effective way to deliver research- based interventions to improve student behavior (Colvin & Kameenui, 1993, Gottfredson, Gottfredson, & Hybl 1993; Taylor-Green & Kartub, 2000). This study focused on the implementation process in order to gain insights on successes and difficulties encountered by school teams during implementation of PBS. This study utilized meeting notes from 22 school teams that received implementation support from Utah's Academic, Behavior and Coaching Initiative (ABC-UBI). These school teams had at least 3 years of implementation support from ABC-UBI and 3 years of data from the School-Wide Evaluation Tool (SET). The SET provided data indicating the fidelity of implemenation of PBS. From these 22 school teams, 628 total meeting notes were examined using grouded theory and an open-coding process. School teams were divided into 3 implementation patterns according to their SET data: consistently high implementing schools, increasing implementation schools and inconsistently implementing schools. A total of 13 themes were established, through multiple measures of inter-rater reliability, as being present in the meeting notes. According to prevalence rates, there were 2 major themes and 4 minor themes indicated in the meeting notes. The major themes indicated that making assignments and data collection were important to successful school teams. The minor themes indicated that meaningful individual rewards for students, regular staff professional development, utilization of tools provided by ABC-UBI and teaching and posting expectations were important to successful schools. Difficulties with data collection were indicated as being associated with inconsistently implementing schools. From the themes it was inferred that public accountability and the creation of professional learning communities were important factors in consistent and successful PBS implementation.

Teachers are faced with the dual task of teaching academic skills and managing students’ problematic behaviors. Randomly selected kindergarten through sixth-grade teachers (N=295 of 1,144; 26% return rate) in rural, urban, and suburban Utah were asked to identify students’ five most problematic behaviors, as well as students’ five most desired social skills which supported social-emotional wellbeing and academic achievement. Teachers’ responses were summarized and information will be used to enhance universal Tier 1 social skills interventions, part of school-wide positive behavior support in Utah’s elementary schools. The top five problematic behaviors identified by participating teachers included (a) defiant and refuses to comply with teacher's requests; (b) aggressive (hits, kicks, shoves); (c) says or does things to hurt others' feelings; (d) inattentive, daydreaming, distracted; and (e) disrespectful to adults. The top five desired social skills included (a) conflict management/resolution; (b) following rules and instructions; (c) self-management: good use of free time, seatwork, assigned tasks; (d) anger management; and (e) coping with challenging situations. These identified behaviors and social skills will guide efforts of Utah’s Tier 1 Positive Behavioral Support in selecting children’s literature and creating classroom lesson plans which specifically address problematic behaviors and focus on desired social skills.

School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) is a plan based on broad assessments of schools and their climate that can be implemented to create classrooms and schools that are focused on community and positive behavior (Horner, Sugai, Todd, & Lewis-Palmer, 2005). SWPBS involves creating and explicitly stating expectations, teaching those expectations, encouraging appropriate behavior, and defining ways to handle inappropriate behavior. Current tools that are suggested for use in conducting an assessment of school climate are: the Best Behavior School Discipline Assessment (BBSDA) also known as the Best Behavior Self-Assessment Survey (BBSAS), the School-Wide Evaluation Tool (SET), the Oregon School Safety Survey, and the Effective Behavior Support Self-Assessment (EBS Self Assessment) (Horner, et al., 2005; Sprague & Walker, 2005). All of these indicators and evaluation tools are helpful in planning SWPBS programs as well as assessing the integrity of implementation and changes in behavior patterns; however, they gather limited information from students. Collecting and examining student attitudes and perceptions about their school and safety is an important aspect of the evaluation process. The current study examined information from student surveys concerning the behavioral expectations at school as well as places in the school they felt safe and unsafe. Information gathered from these surveys was used to create an intervention that targeted a specific area identified as being the least safe and most unsafe, the bathroom, in the school to improve students' sense of safety. Based on the results of student survey information, an intervention was designed and implemented for six weeks. Compared to pre-intervention surveys, the treatment group reported feeling safer in the bathroom after the implementation of the intervention as compared to the control group, which reported no change.

In order to provide effective social, emotional, and behavioral supports to all students, there is a need for formative assessment tools that can help determine the responsiveness of students to intervention. Schoolwide positive behavior support (SWPBS) is one framework that can provide evidence-based intervention within a 3-tiered model to reach students at all levels of risk. This dissertation begins the process of developing a brief, teacher-completed rating scale, intended to be used with students in grades K-8 for the formative assessment of positive classroom behavior. An item pool of 93 positively worded rating scale items was drawn from or adapted from existing rating scales. Teachers (n = 142) rated the importance of each item to their concept of "positive classroom behavior." This survey yielded 30 positively worded items for inclusion on the pilot rating scale. The pilot scale was used by teachers to rate students in two samples drawn from general education K-8 classrooms: a universal tier group of randomly selected students (n = 80) and a targeted tier group of students with mild to moderate behavior problems (n = 82). Pilot scale ratings were significantly higher in the universal group than the targeted group by about one standard deviation, with no significant group by gender interaction. Strong results were found for the split-half reliability (.94) and the internal consistency (.98) of the pilot scale. All but two items showed medium to large item-total correlations (> .5). Factor analysis indicated a unidimensional factor structure, with 59.87% of the variance accounted for by a single factor, and high item loadings (> .4) from 26 of the 30 factors. The unidimensional factor structure of the rating scale indicates its promise for potential use as a general outcome measure (GOM), with items reflecting a range of social, emotional, and behavioral competencies. Future research is suggested in order to continue development and revision of the rating scale with a larger, more diverse sample, and to begin exploring its suitability for screening and formative assessment purposes.

The purpose of the current study is to examine the effects of the Caught Being Good Game (CBGG) on students’ classroom behaviors. The CBGG is a positive variation of the Good Behavior Game, which has been identified as an evidenced-based intervention designed for managing classroom behavior across students, behaviors, and settings. In the current study, the effectiveness of the CBGG intervention was examined within 2 high school special education classrooms located at two school districts in rural southeastern United States. Using a multiple baseline design, the data were analyzed using visual inspection and calculation of non-overlapping data. Results revealed that the percentage of intervals in which on-task behavior occurred increased during the implementation of the CBGG game, while the students’ level of off-task behavior decreased. Acceptability of the intervention of both teachers was favorable. Given the results, the implications of this classroom management tool are positive. Future directions are discussed and the literature base regarding the CBGG was expanded.

The participants in this study were referred by the teacher or the teacher support team for a functional behavioral assessment (FBA) and development of a positive behavior support plan to address disruptive behavior and academic skills deficits. Therefore, the purpose of Experiment I was to examine the ability of FBA procedures to identify students with reading difficulty who demonstrated problem behavior potentially maintained by escape from academic demands. Each environmental variable introduced during the brief functional analysis was manipulated via a multiple element design (Cooper, Wacker, Sasso, Reimers, & Donn, 1990; Derby et al., 1992; Northup et al., 1991). Experiment II sought to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of the Reading to Read (RTR) intervention package in addressing the oral reading fluency and comprehension deficits of referred elementary students. Experiment II also examined the generalized effects of the reading intervention on reducing the identified escapemaintained problem behaviors (i.e., off-task) during the reading class. For Experiment II, a multiple baseline (MBL) across participants design was used to evaluate the impact of the RTR intervention on addressing both academic and problem behaviors (e.g., identified on the FAIR-T). Results from descriptive and functional analysis procedures in Experiment I revealed that all of the participants were performing at least one grade level below expectations in regarding to reading fluency. In addition, all of the participants exhibited more off-task behavior during the difficult task demand versus the easy task demand conditions of the brief functional analysis. The participants also obtained lower scores on comprehension questions during the difficult task demand versus the easy task demand conditions. This pattern of responding suggested the off-task behavior was potentially maintained by escape from academic demands in reading. Results from Experiment II revealed that all participants increased their oral reading fluency levels on intervention probes in comparison to the baseline levels. In addition to the increase in oral reading fluency, there was an increase in their percentage of correct responses in reading comprehension when compared to baseline data. In regards to generalization reading probes, all of the participants evidenced overall increases in their reading skills in comparison to baseline data. In fact, all of the participants increased from frustrational to near mastery levels. Finally, results from Experiment II revealed that all participants’ experienced reduction in their off-task behavior while partaking in the RTR intervention in comparison to baseline levels. This notable decrease extended throughout the study for all participants. Overall, the present results revealed that the RTR intervention was effective in addressing the reading fluency and comprehension deficits of identified students. In addition, remediation of reading skills appeared to have assisted in the reduction of social problem behavior performed during reading instruction in the general education classroom. Important implications for practice and inclusion of the procedures used in this study within applied settings are discussed. In addition, important limitations and considerations for future research are outlined.