School-wide Interventions Research Articles

Effects of Implementing School-Wide Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports on Problem Behaviour and Academic Achievement in a Canadian Elementary School

Although there is much research on School-Wide Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports (PBIS) in the United States, there is little such research in Canada. The purpose of the current study was to provide a case study example of the relation between implementing PBIS and student academic and behavioural outcomes, as well as student perceptions of the school environment. Data were collected in one school as it moved from partial to full implementation of PBIS. The results of the study indicated positive academic and behavioural outcomes for students, as well as increased perceptions of safety, understanding of school expectations, and decreased perceptions of bullying. The results of this study are discussed with implications regarding PBIS in Canada and the importance of fidelity of implementation of school-based interventions.

A Blueprint for Effectively Using RTI Intervention Block Time

Many schools have adopted schoolwide intervention blocks as a component of response-to-intervention (RTI) implementation to ensure that students who need intervention are receiving it. However, virtually no peer-reviewed guidance exists for helping teachers manage this time effectively. This article presents a blueprint for organizing intervention block time so that all students benefit. Teachers and principals should consider (a) identifying appropriate assessment and intervention resources, (b) determining professional development needs to improve capacity for intervention delivery, (c) using personnel resources in the most effective way, (d) structuring the time to deliver interventions and engage students who are not receiving intervention, and (e) optimizing the physical space available to deliver interventions. Specific planning considerations are outlined and suggestions for monitoring fidelity of implementation are presented.

Effects of School-Wide Intervention on Literacy Learning: The SLPs Support

The speech-language pathologist (SLP) who works in an elementary school plays an integral part in the prevention, identification, assessment, and intervention of children who are learning to read a...

CONSTRUCT VALIDATION OF A MEASURE TO ASSESS SUSTAINABILITY OF SCHOOL-WIDE BEHAVIOR INTERVENTIONS

This study assessed aspects of construct validity of the School-wide Universal Behavior Sustainability Index–School Teams (SUBSIST), a measure evaluating critical features of the school context related to sustainability of school-wide interventions. Participants at 217 schools implementing School-wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) were administered the measure. A two-step cluster analysis was performed to classify schools based on responses to the 39 SUBSIST items. A two-cluster solution was obtained, with schools in one cluster (n = 139) obtaining significantly higher scores on SUBSIST items than schools in the other cluster (n = 78). The most critical item that contributed to cluster formation was the use of data for decision making. Results also showed that higher sustainability scores were associated with increased frequency of school team meetings, presentation of data to school staff, access to an external coach/consultant, and greater number of years implementing SWPBS. These results are discussed with regard to implications for sustaining school-wide interventions.

Mediation and Spillover Effects in Group-Randomized Trials: A Case Study of the 4Rs Educational Intervention

Peer influence and social interactions can give rise to spillover effects in which the exposure of one individual may affect outcomes of other individuals. Even if the intervention under study occurs at the group or cluster level as in group-randomized trials, spillover effects can occur when the mediator of interest is measured at a lower level than the treatment. Evaluators who choose groups rather than individuals as experimental units in a randomized trial often anticipate that the desirable changes in targeted social behaviors will be reinforced through interference among individuals in a group exposed to the same treatment. In an empirical evaluation of the effect of a school-wide intervention on reducing individual students’ depressive symptoms, schools in matched pairs were randomly assigned to the 4Rs intervention or the control condition. Class quality was hypothesized as an important mediator assessed at the classroom level. We reason that the quality of one classroom may affect outcomes of children in another classroom because children interact not simply with their classmates but also with those from other classes in the hallways or on the playground. In investigating the role of class quality as a mediator, failure to account for such spillover effects of one classroom on the outcomes of children in other classrooms can potentially result in bias and problems with interpretation. Using a counterfactual conceptualization of direct, indirect, and spillover effects, we provide a framework that can accommodate issues of mediation and spillover effects in group randomized trials. We show that the total effect can be decomposed into a natural direct effect, a within-classroom mediated effect, and a spillover mediated effect. We give identification conditions for each of the causal effects of interest and provide results on the consequences of ignoring “interference” or “spillover effects” when they are in fact present. Our modeling approach disentangles these effects. The analysis examines whether the 4Rs intervention has an effect on childrens’ depressive symptoms through changing the quality of other classes as well as through changing the quality of a child's own class. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Association between exposure to suicide and suicidality outcomes in youth

Ecological studies support the hypothesis that suicide may be "contagious" (i.e., exposure to suicide may increase the risk of suicide and related outcomes). However, this association has not been adequately assessed in prospective studies. We sought to determine the association between exposure to suicide and suicidality outcomes in Canadian youth. We used baseline information from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth between 1998/99 and 2006/07 with follow-up assessments 2 years later. We included all respondents aged 12-17 years in cycles 3-7 with reported measures of exposure to suicide. We included 8766 youth aged 12-13 years, 7802 aged 14-15 years and 5496 aged 16-17 years. Exposure to a schoolmate's suicide was associated with ideation at baseline among respondents aged 12-13 years (odds ratio [OR] 5.06, 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.04-8.40), 14-15 years (OR 2.93, 95% CI 2.02-4.24) and 16-17 years (OR 2.23, 95% CI 1.43-3.48). Such exposure was associated with attempts among respondents aged 12-13 years (OR 4.57, 95% CI 2.39-8.71), 14-15 years (OR 3.99, 95% CI 2.46-6.45) and 16-17 years (OR 3.22, 95% CI 1.62-6.41). Personally knowing someone who died by suicide was associated with suicidality outcomes for all age groups. We also assessed 2-year outcomes among respondents aged 12-15 years: a schoolmate's suicide predicted suicide attempts among participants aged 12-13 years (OR 3.07, 95% CI 1.05-8.96) and 14-15 years (OR 2.72, 95% CI 1.47-5.04). Among those who reported a schoolmate's suicide, personally knowing the decedent did not alter the risk of suicidality. We found that exposure to suicide predicts suicide ideation and attempts. Our results support school-wide interventions over current targeted interventions, particularly over strategies that target interventions toward children closest to the decedent.

School Counselors’ Involvement with a School-Wide Positive Behavior Support Intervention: Addressing Student Behavior Issues in a Proactive and Positive Manner

For schools using School-Wide Positive Behavior Supports, the school counselor is an essential member of the implementation team. Moreover, the prevention model corresponds with the school counselor standards and the ASCA National Model. This article shows how a school counselor teams with school staff in a K-3 elementary school of 600 pupils to implement and manage a School-Wide Positive Behavior Support targeted intervention called Check-in/Check-out (CICO). The authors review current research relevant to CICO and provide sample student data, daily behavior report cards, referral forms, and home reports. The article gives suggestions on using CICO to support students with mental health concerns including using data to collaborate with other community professionals.

Science Achievement for All: Improving Science Performance and Closing Achievement Gaps

This article addresses the serious and growing need to improve science instruction and science achievement for all students. We will describe the results of a 3-year study that transformed science instruction and student achievement at two high-poverty ethnically diversePUBLIC elementary schools in Texas. The school-wide intervention included purposeful planning, inquiry science instruction, and contextually rich academic science vocabulary development. In combination, these instructional practices rapidly improved student-science learning outcomes and narrowed achievement gaps across diverse student populations.

Effective behavioural and instructional support systems: an integrated approach to behaviour and academic support at the district level

In an effort to answer the call for improved behavioural and academic outcomes for students, many school districts across the nation are engaged in some aspect of reform. Through these reform efforts, renewed emphasis is placed on the development of instructional leaders. Leadership models are emerging to provide districts with organizational systems that support effective implementation of evidence-based practices (EBPs), which result in improved student outcomes. The purpose of this article is to describe one such effort where instructional leadership is distributed and coordinated across a district office and its schools. Effective Behavioural and Instructional Support Systems (EBISS) provides the organizational tools for districts to blend two specific EBPs, the School-wide Reading Model (SWRM) and the School-wide Positive Behavioural Intervention and Support (SWPBIS) model. Embedded in the EBISS model is the EBISS Teaming Framework that provides a structure for data-based implementation teams at the ...

Disproportionality in special education: identifying children with emotional behavioural difficulties in Irish primary schools

Within categories of special educational needs, emotional and behavioural difficulties have received much attention in recent years, particularly in relation to their definition and identification by parents and teachers. This paper stems from previous research which highlights how children from disadvantaged backgrounds and those attending schools designated as socio-economically disadvantaged are significantly more likely than their peers to be identified as having a special educational need of a non-normative type such as emotional behavioural difficulty (EBD). Using data from the Growing Up in Ireland study, it examines whether the EBD identified by teachers or within certain schools is matched by the child’s own performance on an internationally validated emotional and mental health measure – the Piers–Harris. Findings show that overall self-reported social emotional well-being bears a strong relationship to the probability of being identified with an EBD. However, boys, children from economically inactive and one-parent households and children attending the most disadvantaged school contexts are more likely to be identified with having an EBD, even after taking into account their social background characteristics and their scoring on the Piers–Harris measure. These findings suggest that the subjective nature of EBD identification is resulting in a disproportionate number of these children being identified with EBD. The implications of this study are explored for existing disability/SEN classification systems, school-wide intervention models and the impact on individual students labelled as EBD. Overall, the findings pose searching questions about the validity of employing SEN classification systems in deciding eligibility and types of appropriate provision.

Schoolwide Intervention to Reduce Chronic Tardiness at the Middle and High School Levels

When many students are tardy at the secondary level, teachers must continually restart instruction or delay beginning instructional periods throughout the school day. To address the considerable amount of instructional time lost caused by high rates of tardiness, the authors investigated the results of schoolwide intervention to reduce student tardiness in a tribal middle and high school. The participating school staff implemented a schoolwide intervention that included explicit teaching of expected transition behavior, active supervision of students in common areas during transition times, and consistent consequences for tardiness. After implementation, average daily tardiness decreased substantially and lower levels were maintained over time. The authors provide implications for schoolwide intervention to improve student punctuality and recommendations for future research.

Selecting a Clinical Intervention Documentation System for an Academic Setting

Pharmacists' clinical interventions have been the subject of a substantial body of literature that focuses on the process and outcomes of establishing an intervention documentation program within the acute care setting. Few reports describe intervention documentation as a component of doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) programs; none describe the process of selecting an intervention documentation application to support the complete array of pharmacy practice and experiential sites. The process that a school of pharmacy followed to select and implement a school-wide intervention system to document the clinical and financial impact of an experiential program is described. Goals included finding a tool that allowed documentation from all experiential sites and the ability to assign dollar savings (hard and soft) to all documented interventions. The paper provides guidance for other colleges and schools of pharmacy in selecting a clinical intervention documentation system for program-wide use.

"It's Murder Out Today": Middle School Girls Speak Out about Girl Fighting

Girl fighting and its relational context is a problem that is receiving extensive attention in popular and academic circles. This article reports on a project that gathered the opinions from focus groups of seventh- and eighth-grade girls, organized to understand the perspectives of young adolescent girls in middle school on girl fighting. Both individual and contextual themes arose in the findings: the impact of the middle school structure, which differed from the more protected elementary school; the social structure that defined how girls interacted; the loyalty expressed toward members of the peer group and the betrayal felt when the bonds were not respected; the sensitivity that all girls felt toward racial stereotyping and teasing behaviors; the impact of teasing and the emotional reactivity that girls experienced when they felt hurt or betrayed; the differences in coping between seventh-grade and eighth-grade girls; and the school factors that supported or challenged girls' coping. Recommendations for universal schoolwide interventions as well as interventions targeted more specifically toward girls in distress are provided.

A school-randomized clinical trial of an integrated social–emotional learning and literacy intervention: Impacts after 1 school year.

To report experimental impacts of a universal, integrated school-based intervention in social-emotional learning and literacy development on change over 1 school year in 3rd-grade children's social-emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes. This study employed a school-randomized, experimental design and included 942 3rd-grade children (49% boys; 45.6% Hispanic/Latino, 41.1% Black/African American, 4.7% non-Hispanic White, and 8.6% other racial/ethnic groups, including Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American) in 18 New York City public elementary schools. Data on children's social-cognitive processes (e.g., hostile attribution biases), behavioral symptomatology (e.g., conduct problems), and literacy skills and academic achievement (e.g., reading achievement) were collected in the fall and spring of 1 school year. There were main effects of the 4Rs Program after 1 year on only 2 of the 13 outcomes examined. These include children's self-reports of hostile attributional biases (Cohen's d = 0.20) and depression (d = 0.24). As expected based on program and developmental theory, there were impacts of the intervention for those children identified by teachers at baseline with the highest levels of aggression (d = 0.32-0.59) on 4 other outcomes: children's self-reports of aggressive fantasies, teacher reports of academic skills, reading achievement scaled scores, and children's attendance. This report of effects of the 4Rs intervention on individual children across domains of functioning after 1 school year represents an important first step in establishing a better understanding of what is achievable by a schoolwide intervention such as the 4Rs in its earliest stages of unfolding. The first-year impacts, combined with our knowledge of sustained and expanded effects after a second year, provide evidence that this intervention may be initiating positive developmental cascades both in the general population of students and among those at highest behavioral risk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Bullying Update: Are We Making Any Progress?

1. Gwen M. Glew, MD, MPH* 2. Karin S. Frey, PhD† 3. William O. Walker, MD§ 1. *Assistant Professor, University of Washington School of Medicine; Department of Pediatrics, Division of Genetics and Developmental Medicine, Seattle Children's Hospital, Seattle, Wash. 2. †Research Associate Professor, Educational Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash. 3. §Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine; Chief, Division of Developmental Medicine, Director, Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics Fellowship, Seattle Children's Hospital, Seattle, Wash. After completing this article, readers should be able to: 1. Discuss the research definition of bullying, how it differs from what laypersons consider bullying, and how having two definitions can be problematic. 2. Identify recognized risk factors for bullying, especially those identified as such in the past 10 years. 3. Describe how to advise parents of children who bully as well as children who are victimized by bullying at school. 4. Understand the school's role in identifying bullying behaviors and their prevention. 5. Know the evidence-based school-wide interventions that have been effective in decreasing bullying. In 2000, my colleagues and I (GMG) at the University of Washington wrote an article for Pediatrics in Review to provide research-based information about the phenomenon of childhood bullying. (1) The purpose of that article was to enhance clinicians' understanding of bullying and to suggest how they might help their patients and families deal with it. Since that time, a substantial amount of research has been conducted. This review summarizes a subset of that literature from the last decade to answer this important question: Are we making any progress toward decreasing bullying among children? Cases presented are not real, and any resemblance to actual persons is coincidental. Rather, these cases are composites of characteristics and scenarios derived from our work designed to illustrate key concepts. The term bullying is problematic. The layperson, the medical practitioner, and the researcher on the subject of bullying may have different concepts of what bullying is. Bullying, for research purposes, is defined as repeated negative behavior by one or more individuals aimed at a person who is perceived as being weaker or more vulnerable. Bullying …

Taking a Public Health Approach to School-Based Parenting Interventions: The Triple P-Positive Parenting Program

Considerable advances have been made through parenting and school-based interventions in preventing or reducing misbehavior. However, the majority of parents who might benefit from these services are unable to access them. In this paper we propose that a promising solution is to adopt a public health approach that provides a well-coordinated continuum of care with multiple levels of service sufficient to meet parent and student needs. We argue that this public health approach, which parallels the Response to Intervention (RTI) approach frequently seen in United States schools, can best be achieved by melding multi-level parenting programs with multi-level school-wide interventions. To illuminate some of the potential benefits and challenges of this public health approach which bridges gaps between school, clinical, and community psychology, we describe the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program and propose some adaptations needed to develop an effective interface between Triple P and schools.

BULLY PREVENTION IN POSITIVE BEHAVIOR SUPPORT

Bullying behaviors are a growing concern in U.S. schools. We present here a behavioral approach to bully prevention utilizing a schoolwide intervention. Bully prevention in positive behavior support (BP-PBS) teaches students to withhold the social rewards hypothesized to maintain bullying. A single-subject multiple baseline design across 6 students and three elementary schools was implemented in an empirical evaluation of the intervention's effectiveness. Results indicated that implementation was functionally related to decreased incidents of bullying for all 6 students observed. In addition, we observed a decrease in the social responses from victims and bystanders. Finally, school staff implemented the program with a high degree of fidelity and rated the program as effective and efficient. Limitations and implications of these results are discussed.

A Collaborative Planning Framework for Teachers Implementing Tiered Instruction

The recent reauthorization and regulations of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA 2004) encourage the use of schoolwide interventions including response to intervention (RTI; Bradley, Danielson, & Doolittle, 2007). RTI refers to a multi tiered system ihat addresses the academic needs of all students by using evidence-based instructional practice, progress monitoring, and data-informed instructional problem solving (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006; Rinaldi & Samson, 2008), A tiered system is an educational model that delineates three or more levels of instructional interventions based on gaps in student skills. A tier is a level in an RTI system thai includes interventions and supports for a clearly defined group of students. RT! is highly encouraged as it ensures high-quality instruclion and universal screening of all children, addresses the needs of struggling learners by providing interventions at increasing levels of intensity, and significantly decreases the number of inappropriate referrals to special education (Vaughn & Ortiz, 2008), As a result, a significant number of public schools in the United States are in the planning and implementation stages of this initiative. In this article, we present a collaborative planning framework for educators implementing RTI. The framework addresses how educators can use universal screening and progress tiionitoring data to plan for instruction al all tiers as well as evaluate the responsiveness of interventions provided at the Tier 2 and Tier 3 levels within the RTI model. The results are a feasible support system by which educators can improve service delivery lo all slu-

What Works in College Outreach: Assessing Targeted and Schoolwide Interventions for Disadvantaged Students

By offering information, counseling, and tutoring, college outreach programs attempt to smooth the path between high school and higher education for at-risk students. But do these program work? This paper uses longitudinal data from the Education Longitudinal Study to construct two quasi-experiments to assess the effectiveness of college outreach. The first compares outreach program participants with a propensity score matched sample of program non-participants to measure the effects of targeted college outreach programs. The second assesses the effects of school-wide college outreach programs by comparing students in school-wide outreach high schools with students in a matched sample of high schools that offer no formal outreach. The results suggest that targeted outreach programs do little to change the educational experiences of participating students. However, there is limited evidence to suggest that school-wide outreach programs may have modest “spill-over” effects, improving the educational outcomes of relatively unengaged students at participating schools.

A cluster randomized controlled trial of child‐focused psychiatric consultation and a school systems‐focused intervention to reduce aggression

While school-based anti-bullying programs are widely used, there have been few controlled trials of effectiveness. This study compared the effect of manualized School Psychiatric Consultation (SPC), CAPSLE (a systems and mentalization focused whole school intervention), and treatment-as-usual (TAU) in reducing aggression and victimization among elementary school children. Participants were 1,345 third to fifth graders in nine elementary schools in a medium-sized Midwestern city who took part in a cluster-level randomized controlled trial with stratified restricted allocation, to assess efficacy after two years of active intervention and effectiveness after one year of minimal input maintenance intervention. Outcome measures included peer and self-reports of bullying, bystanding, and mentalizing behavior and classroom behavioral observations of disruptive and off-task behavior. CAPSLE moderated the developmental trend of increasing peer-reported victimization (p < .01), aggression (p < .05), self-reported aggression (p < .05) and aggressive bystanding (p < .05), compared to TAU schools. CAPSLE also moderated a decline in empathy and an increase in the percent of children victimized compared to SPC (p < .01) and TAU conditions (p < .01). Results for self-reported victimization, helpful bystanding, and beliefs in the legitimacy of aggression did not suggest significantly different changes among the study conditions over time. CAPSLE produced a significant decrease in off-task (p < .001) and disruptive classroom behaviors (p < .01), while behavioral change was not observed in SPC and TAU schools. Superiority with respect to TAU for victimization (p < .05), aggression (p < .01), and helpful (p < .05) and aggressive bystanding (p < .01) were maintained in the follow-up year. A teacher-implemented school-wide intervention that does not focus on disturbed children substantially reduced aggression and improved classroom behavior.