Students with disabilities are at an increased risk of experiencing poorer quality peer relationships than those without disabilities. Previous school-based efforts to promote positive peer interactions among students with and without disabilities have included individual skill development and broader initiatives such as inclusive school…

A history of trauma can have a significant negative impact on the functioning of a student in the school environment. Check & Connect, a school engagement and dropout intervention program, has been found to have positive effects on student school engagement and decrease the likelihood of dropping out of school. However, a review of the Check…

Mentorship-based interventions have been found to have positive effects for youth at-risk of negative academic and behavioral outcomes. Implementation studies of school-based mentorship programs, such as the Check & Connect (C&C) program, have mixed results with some studies supporting positive academic and behavioral outcomes for students…

Disengagement is a concept that captures the gradual behavioral, affective, and cognitive distancing from school, and is thus an early indicator of students being at risk for dropout. Based on a social identity framework, we predicted that higher social identification with the class and a positive classroom climate would be associated with lower…

The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological study was to explore at-risk students' experiences and engagement with game-based learning in a Northwest Florida middle school through their shared experiences of the phenomenon. At-risk students are in danger of grade-level retention if they do not close their achievement gaps on standardized…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of a Tier 2 classroom-based motivational interviewing (MI) intervention--the Aspire Group Intervention (AGI)--designed for ninth-grade students identified as being at high risk for school dropout. The nine-lesson AGI curriculum was…

Research literature identifies that students with more positive student-teacher relationships attain more desirable student outcomes than their counterparts with less positive relationships (Roorda, Koomen, Split, & Oort, 2011). How student-teacher relationships impact students are studied developmentally. The effect of positive relationships…

Check-in/check-out (CICO) is an evidence-based multicomponent intervention widely implemented in elementary and middle schools. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether an adapted CICO intervention, with CICO components designed to be more developmentally appropriate for adolescents and contextually relevant for high schools, could be…

Universal interventions implemented in schools have the potential to impact large numbers of students on a multitude of behavioral and academic outcomes. In the context of a large group randomized controlled trial, the current study examined whether teacher-perceived student need for behavior support plans at baseline moderated the effects of a…

The goal of greater student engagement has led districts to turn to technology, specifically, one-to-one (1:1) or a device for every student. This qualitative case study explored teachers' mobile device use to implement high-leverage instructional practices that engage students, advance equity, and improve student learning outcomes for underserved…

School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) relies on effective implementation of Tier 1 practices to ensure accurate identification of students in need of more intensive supports at Tier 2 or Tier 3. While measures of school-level fidelity are widely used, measures of classroom-level implementation of Tier 1 supports are…

The dual-factor model of mental health proposes that high wellbeing and low distress are necessary to define mental health. This study used latent profile analysis to identify mental health profiles in a sample of 3,587 Australian grade 6 students and explored the association between mental health profiles and school outcomes measured in grades 7…

Research indicates teachers feel teaching goal-setting is an effective way to enhance academic engagement. However, teachers ultimately feel unprepared to embed goal-setting instruction into academic content to support active student engagement. Given the importance teachers place on goal-setting skills, there is a need to identify strategies to…

Check-In/Check-Out (CICO) is an effective and widely used Tier 2 behavior program in elementary and middle schools. This article describes a pilot study focused on examining the impact and usability of an adapted CICO program in a high school. We used a single-case multiple baseline design across five 9th grade students to evaluate the effects of…

This study describes the work of one high school team in designing, developing, supporting, and field-testing a new course to support numeracy and general learning skills for a particularly diverse population of students. The rationale, curriculum design, and pilot implementation of the course are situated in existing curriculum structures and…