Students succeed in school environments that support them in demonstrating prosocial and expected behavior. Student behaviors that disrupt or distract from classroom instruction can result in fewer learning opportunities for students, strained relationships between students and teachers, perceptions of unsupportive classroom and school…

Middle school teachers frequently struggle with positively managing student behavior. However, praise-to-reprimand ratios (PRRs) have received little research attention. PRRs studied in elementary school have been positively associated with improvements in on-task and prosocial behavior, but limited research has been conducted on optimal PRRs in…

This cluster randomized controlled trial evaluated the efficacy of the CHAMPS classroom management program on the social behavioral and academic outcomes of a large diverse sample of middle school students within an urban context. Participants included 102 teachers and 1,450 students in sixth to eighth grade. Two-level hierarchical linear models…

This study provides evidence on the impact of including warm messages in elaborated feedback. These messages are aimed at the motivational process that can be mobilised by feedback and that which can condition its reception and the way students face the task (post-feedback behaviour). In a task where secondary school students had to learn a new…

The effectiveness of behavioral interventions can be dependent on the fidelity with which practitioners design and implement those methods. Fidelity refers to the degree to which interventions are implemented as intended. Interventions implemented with low fidelity do not achieve anticipated results with students, whereas high-fidelity…

Positioning students as competent is a teaching practice that uses specific, explicit affirmations to note that students have contributed something meaningful to the community of learners. It supports student agency in the mathematics classroom and contributes to the development of a positive mathematics identity. In this article, the authors…

The intent of this study was to examine three high impact instructional strategies and determine their impact on self-efficacy in writing in fourth-grade and fifth-grade classrooms. Goal setting, goal tracking, and celebration of success are instructional strategies that are widely used with various capacities in the classroom. These strategies…

Following a review of the literature to identify core principles of schoolwide positive behavior interventions and supports (SWPBIS), this study employed coding methods to examine teacher concerns as expressed in their responses to an open-ended probe in five middle schools. Teachers in all schools expressed concerns for their colleagues' support…

Youth development researchers have focused on persistent challenges facing youth in diverse urban settings; thus, we know less about youth in rural communities. Using multilevel modeling, we explored contextual factors associated with school grades and educational aspirations. We find that, on average relative to students from urban schools,…

The aim of this study was to examine how different bystander roles in peer victimisation situations relate to moral disengagement, defender self-efficacy, and student-teacher relationship quality. Self-reported survey data were collected from 333 middle and junior high school students (10-15 years of age) from four schools in Sweden. Random…

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…

This is the first systematic review of the school outcome literature for behavior interventions used with middle school students exhibiting disruptive behaviors. A total of 51 investigations (published between 2000 and 2020) including 6,498 students and 264 implementers were coded on four dimensions (i.e., sample, interventions, methodology, and…

Students identified with emotional disabilities (ED) are increasingly being included in the general education academic classrooms. Most general education academic teachers have little training or exposure to the characteristics and interventions associated with students with ED. Behavior-specific praise (BSP) has been shown to be an effective…

Teacher praise is an evidence-based strategy shown to increase appropriate prosocial behavior and decrease disruptive behavior, particularly with elementary school age students. In this article, we provide direction and recommendations for using positive feedback with middle and high school students. A review of the research literature, guidelines…

As a variety of commercial educational applications are currently being taken into daily use to provide technology-enhanced feedback, research is needed to observe whether pedagogical evidence of the impact of feedback on learning and well-being is being utilized. To this end, this study explores the connections between technology-enhanced…