A traditional tootling procedure was implemented along with a public posting component to determine the effects on academically engaged, disruptive, and passive off-task behaviors in four general education high school classrooms. Students in the traditional tootling phase were instructed to report on their peers' positive, prosocial behaviors. At…

Middle school is a cornerstone for success in high school. However, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement of adolescents often decline as they transition from elementary to middle school, resulting in lower school grades and more challenging behaviors, especially for adolescents with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders…

Discrete trial teaching (DTT) is a common teaching methodology used within intervention for autistics/individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Practice recommendations related to using DTT for receptive language instruction includes the desired size of the array of stimuli to be presented. Some recommendations include ensuring…

Differential negative reinforcement of alternative behavior is a technique in which students can escape a portion of a task they perceive to be unpleasant by reaching a predetermined criterion. In this article, we define the negative reinforcement trap and review research on differential negative reinforcement of alternative behavior. We then…

Although the good behavior game (GBG) has a long empirical record for effectively decreasing inappropriate student behavior, there are fewer studies that have targeted improving appropriate behavior. This article describes why and how the GBG can be used by teachers across grade levels and situations to increase student appropriate behavior and…

The Caught Being Good Game (CBGG) is an evidence-based practice used in classrooms to reduce disruptive classroom behavior. This approach to classwide intervention has been implemented and its effectiveness demonstrated across grade levels and types of disruptive behavior. Teachers report that the CBGG is an easy classroom management strategy to…

Praise, defined as public or private expression of approval for behavior, is recognized as a critical component in many classroom behavior interventions. Historically, praise has been viewed from the perspective of educators in terms of both increasing educator-preferred behaviors and in terms of educators' perspectives. Little is known about…

A tremendous amount of evidence supports the importance of building relationships between educators and students (Kincaide et al., 2020). Because of this, there is an emerging focus in both research and practice on how student-teacher relationships are assessed, the impact of these relationships on student outcomes, and methods for building and…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) often receive low rates of teacher praise and high rates of teacher reprimands, though they may respond more positively to praise and more negatively to reprimands than their typically developing peers. Teacher praise-to-reprimand ratios (PRRs) are associated with increased student engagement,…

This study addressed teacher perspectives of behavior management in the post-virtual learning classroom. The problem that was addressed was the decline of middle school student classroom behavior compared to the pre-pandemic classroom, which is crucial for educators due to its influence on the quality of teaching and learning. The purpose of this…

The topic of praise and more specifically, behavior-specific praise, in special education is complex. It requires an investigation of multiple types of praise in a variety of settings and a variety of individuals with even more severe intellectual and developmental disabilities and other impairments (IDDI). Historically, in much research,…

Previous research documents the positive impacts that teacher praise can have on students' behavior in the classroom; positive praise is a reinforcer that improves and maintains appropriate classroom behavior. Identifying current trends in natural rates of praise--praise that occurs in the absence of specific intervention or training--may help…

This study investigates the effectiveness of the PRIMA antibullying program for elementary education using a cluster-randomized trial with two experimental conditions (with and without student lessons) and a control group. Students of 31 schools participated in the study (N = 3,135; M[subscript age] = 10 years). Multilevel regression analyses…

This study examined the generalizability and dependability of observational estimates of middle and high school teachers' use of praise and reprimands. Frequency of behavior-specific praise, general praise, and total reprimands were collected across 67, 20-min observations that took place during class-wide instruction in general education…

This article provides a conceptual framework for using fixed-interval praise delivery in the educational setting. Fixed-interval praise delivery can be conceptualized as an antecedent-based strategy that disrupts the natural behavior to contingency relationship in a four-term contingency model (Establishing…