Over the past several decades, secular schools in North America have been expected to impart moral education to students. An array of approaches, strategies, methods, and philosophical and theoretical orientations for doing so are promoted in education literature. Two, in particular, have also been politically endorsed in Ontario, Canada—character education and community service. Yet, there remains discrepancy among teachers’ practices, knowledge, awareness, and intentions. Anecdotal reports indicate that relatively few teachers provide a consistent and comprehensive moral education, and those who do, act primarily on their own initiative and at their own discretion. Previous empirical evidence suggests that teachers who are moral agents conceive of, enact, and reflect on a personally developed form of moral education, which is embedded in the moral and ethical dimensions of school and classroom life, curriculum, and pedagogy. This single-case study aims to broaden and deepen the scholarship of moral agency as moral education, by exploring the question How does a teacher, who prioritizes the moral education of students, envision, enact and reflect on that moral education. Positioning myself as a conduit, within what is often considered to be a closed-door culture of teaching, I metaphorically opened one teacher’s classroom door and exposed her practices. The result is a uniquely comprehensive and genuine portrait of moral agency, which details the use of a variety of strategies and methods for imparting morality. These include intentionally modelling moral behaviours, conduct and dispositions; fostering relationships with and among students; creating a classroom community; delivering virtues lessons and messages; encouraging discussions of a moral nature; nurturing self-discipline in students; providing opportunities for community service; and assessing students’ social and moral development. The harmonious co-existence of these strategies and methods within one classroom and one teacher’s practice; the complementary and supportive way in which the teacher makes use of them; and their independence of any particular philosophical or theoretical orientation for moral education, represent the main insights of this study. These insights suggest that moral education in a secular classroom might be more comprehensively understood and promoted as moral agency.

Teaching is considered to be one of the most highly demanding professions, and one that is associated with high levels of stress and sometimes deleterious outcomes. Although research demonstrates that burnout and attrition are often associated with specific characteristics of the occupation (e.g., challenging workload, standardized testing, merit-based salary) minimal research focuses on how to better support teachers’ well-being. The field of positive psychology affords a new perspective in how to obtain quality mental health without solely focusing on psychopathology within a deficits-based approach. This includes the implementation of interventions (i.e., positive psychology interventions [PPI]) that target constructs of well-being (e.g., character strengths, hope, optimism, gratitude, etc.) and are associated with positive changes in authentic happiness. This study examined how a strength-based, PPI entitled Utilizing Signature Strengths in a New Way (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005) impacts dimensions of teacher well-being, as well as other relevant outcomes (i.e., flourishing, burnout) within the school context. Previous research has shown that strengths-based intervention to be the PPI with the most substantial impact and the longest lasting outcomes (Seligman et al., 2005). Utilizing a concurrent multiple baseline single-case design with eight teachers, the study evaluated the effects of the strengths-based PPI on teacher’s overall happiness (i.e., subjective well-being) as indicated by self-report measures of life satisfaction and positive and negative affect. The teachers exhibited significant gains in life satisfaction and reductions in negative affect from pre- to post-intervention that were also evident one month following the intervention. Although positive affect did not significantly change from pre- to post-intervention, a significant gain was apparent at one-month follow-up. Single-case analytic strategies (i.e., visual analysis, masked visual analysis, and hierarchical linear modeling) found that the intervention positively impacted teachers’ overall subjective well-being (composite of standardized life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect scores). Results for single indicators of subjective well-being found variability in basic effects among different individuals (i.e., some teachers benefited more than others) further supporting the theory of person-activity fit. Regarding the intervention’s effects on secondary outcomes that were examined only at pre, post, and one-month follow-up time points, findings indicated the teachers experienced a significant increase in work satisfaction immediately following the intervention, as well as a significant increase in feelings of flourishing at follow-up. Significant decreases in negative dimensions of teachers’ mental health including stress and burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion) were also demonstrated. Findings from the current study provide initial support for the efficacy of a teacher-focused, strengths-based intervention and its ability to improve multiple components of teacher well-being within an elementary school. Implications for school psychologists and policy, contributions to the literature, and future directions are discussed.

A model of Teacher Child Interaction Therapy (TCIT) was implemented in two kindergarten classrooms of students (n = 2) who successfully completed Parent Child Interaction Therapy, but continued to demonstrate disruptive behaviors in the classroom. The current study first indicated that TCIT was implemented with integrity by both the therapists and teacher participants. Next, the effects of this intervention on the teacher’s skills, students’ disruptive behaviors, teacher’s stress, and teacher-child relationships were investigated. The treatment acceptability was also examined. Both visual and statistical analyses found a treatment effect in both cases was seen for both teachers’ increased use of positive interaction skills and decrease of negative interaction skills during the intervention session. However, these skills generalized to the interactions between the teacher and student during classroom instruction. Mixed results were found related to teachers’ use of effective commands. Results from visual analysis indicated that one child participant demonstrated a decrease in disruptive behaviors according to both teacher rating scales and classroom behavior observations. Neither teacher indicated significantly reduced stress over the course of TCIT. Teacher-child relationships improved for both students; however, one teacher also reported increased conflict in the relationship. Both teachers expressed high levels of treatment acceptability for the intervention. Further research should investigate the underlying causes for the nuances in the findings of this study. Additional research is also warranted to determine whether these results can be generalized to other students as well as best practices for implementing this intervention in schools.

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Visual analysis is the primary method of analyzing data in single-subject methodology, which is the predominant research method used in the fields of applied behavior analysis and special education. Previous research on the reliability of visual analysis suggests that judges often disagree about what constitutes an intervention effect. Considering that visual analysis involves a complex set of discriminations and sometimes produces disagreement among experts, it is particularly important to examine methods to train individuals to visually analyze data. Only a handful of studies have investigated the effectiveness of trainings on visual analysis. Most have relied on mechanical methods and/or evaluated the effectiveness of the procedure using a narrow set of graphs (e.g., graphs without slope). The purpose of this study was to evaluate two training methods using graphs with various combinations of effect types. The computer-based training, which includes high rates of practice with feedback, was compared to a lecture condition and a control condition. Results indicate that both training methods (i.e., the computer-based training and the lecture) were more effective than a control condition, but were not substantially different from one another. We discuss the implications of these results for training individuals in visual analysis as well as directions for future research.

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The efficacy of reading interventions on elementary students’ decoding and word reading skills and reading comprehension has been well-established in the literature. The efficacy of online reading interventions, however, is unknown. This study adapted an in-person reading fluency intervention for synchronous online implementation and examined its effectiveness in a single-case research design. Three struggling readers in grades 2 and 3 participated in an 8-week online reading intervention. Pre-test, post-test, and progress monitoring data were collected and analyzed. The results indicated that the online RAVE-O intervention was effective in increasing the participants’ accurate word reading and decoding skills as well as their reading comprehension. The adapted intervention was implemented with fidelity and maintained its efficacy in an online setting. For struggling readers who cannot access intervention resources in person, an online reading intervention such as the one used in this study could have a positive effect on their reading skills. / Graduate

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Research shows that conversations and daily interaction among teachers and children is crucial for their development. Observing children and interpreting their thinking processes is a significant factor in intentionally planning curriculum that emerges from children’s thinking, assists them in making connections, and extends their learning. This article presents findings of a single case design study investigating the effects of the observation and interpretation processes in a Cycle of Inquiry System (COI) (Broderick and Hong in Early Childh Res Pract 13:1–14, 2011) intervention on preschool teachers’ productive conversations with children. The intervention for each teacher consisted of pre and post interviews, a 1-day COI training, use of COI observation and interpretation forms, and coaching meetings with the researcher. The participants were 4 preschool teachers in Northeast Tennessee. Teachers were videotaped in their classrooms working with children during the free play time and coded for productive and non-productive conversation strategies for determining the baseline and changes during the intervention. All the teachers show an increase in productive conversation strategies to differing degrees. The non-overlapping pairs analysis for all participants is represented by a large value. The findings indicate the benefit of training teachers to observe and interpret the meaning of children’s conversations to intentionally plan for productive conversations that impact learning.

On a group level, satisfaction with botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) treatment in neurological indications is high. However, it is well known that a relevant amount of patients may not respond as expected. The aim of this study is to evaluate the BoNT treatment outcome on an individual level using a statistical single-case analysis as an adjunct to traditional group statistics. The course of the daily perceived severity of symptoms across a BoNT cycle was analyzed in 20 cervical dystonia (CD) and 15 hemifacial spasm (HFS) patients. A parametric single-case autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) time series analysis was used to detect individual responsiveness to BoNT treatment. Overall, both CD and HFS patients significantly responded to BoNT treatment with a gradual worsening of symptom intensities towards BoNT reinjection. However, only 8/20 CD patients (40%) and 5/15 HFS patients (33.3%) displayed the expected U-shaped curve of BoNT efficacy across a single treatment cycle. CD (but not HFS) patients who followed the expected outcome course had longer BoNT injection intervals, showed a better match to objective symptom assessments, and were characterized by a stronger certainty to control their somatic symptoms (i.e., internal medical locus of control). In addition to standard evaluation procedures, patients should be identified who do not follow the mean course-of-treatment effect. Thus, the ARIMA single-case time series analysis seems to be an appropriate addition to clinical treatment studies in order to detect individual courses of subjective symptom intensities.