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Four male 9th-grade students with mild to moderate disabilities participated in a single case design that compared choral responding (CR) and a choral responding plus mnemonic device (CR+) during geography lessons. The authors used an alternating treatments design to evaluate the effects of the two strategies on students' on-task behavior and daily quiz scores in identifying states on a map of the United States. The results showed that the CR+ was more effective than CR in increasing on-task behavior and accuracy levels on daily quiz scores, as well as performance on a 1-week delayed recall test. The teacher and students rated the CR+ as highly acceptable. A discussion of limitations, future research, and practical implications is included.

The purpose of this study is to update the research regarding perceptions of specific challenging behaviors that teachers find to be most prevalent and/or problematic. This study analyzes the role of teacher demographics (gender, race, grade level, and years of experience) on their perceptions of specifically defined challenging behaviors. After conducting a comprehensive review of the literature, nine categories of challenging behaviors in schools and classrooms were created. Using these definitions, this study analyzed 800 surveys of kindergarten through twelfth grade teachers in five districts of one state to measure their perceptions of these nine categories of challenging behavior. Teachers were also surveyed for demographic data to investigate response patterns for different challenging behaviors. Analyses indicated that "Off-task" was the most prevalent and problematic challenging behavior and "Isolation/No social interaction" was the least prevalent and problematic challenging behavior. Statistically significant differences in ratings were noted according to gender, grade level and years teaching. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

It is a persistent challenge to meet the academic needs of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) particularly in the area of math word problems. This study used a multiple-baseline across participants design for three elementary-aged students identified as emotional/behavioral disordered. The intervention consisted of an empirically-based teaching strategy that focused on conceptual understanding, fluency and problem solving delivered by the classroom teacher who had received training via teacher workshops. For all three participants, the intervention resulted in increased on-task behavior and percentage of problems solved correctly. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. (Contains 3 figures.)

Classrooms are complex social systems in which teachers and students interact in a variety of ways across contexts. Of issue is both the nature and frequency of teachers' use of what typically are considered effective instructional practice and the typical manner in which students respond to different teacher behaviors. This study expands upon earlier research using direction observation and coding systems to take a snapshot of how classrooms typically operate and to analyze how teacher behaviors predict student success rates. Over 1000 observations of elementary and high school classrooms were conducted during instructional contexts and the data for both teacher and student behavior summarized for analysis. Descriptive data on specific frequency and duration outcomes are presented for teachers and students and possible interactions are discussed. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

Although the conceptual foundations of PBS at the universal level have been widely described and presented in the literature, secondary and tertiary interventions have been presented through very limited examples. This paper defines the key features of secondary and tertiary interventions and presents a decision-making process to guide schools through a continuum of strategies at these levels. The continuum is described in terms of a recursive loop, repetitively asking four questions: what is predictable about student failure, what is the simplest effective intervention, how can consistent implementation be achieved, and is it working? With each pass through this set of questions there is a steadily increasing focus on smaller groups and eventually individual students. The focus on the continuum of strategies at the tertiary level for individual students is presented through the lens of functional behavior assessment. A summary and recommendations for future study are included. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)