Howard Wills

The Principal Investigator (PI) will conduct a program of research focused on improving self-regulation for high school students with disabilities and challenging behavior. The PI will also participate in mentoring and training to build skills related to school-based experimental research, iterative intervention development, and grant writing and management. Students with disabilities can experience social, emotional, and behavior problems at significantly higher rates than their peers witho...

The postdoctoral research program will provide postdoctoral fellows with extensive research training in the areas of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). The overarching goal of this program is to provide four fellows (with 2 years of training each) with a foundation in rigorous scientific methodology so that they can ultimately contribute to the field of special education in a way that is meaningful to practitioners.

The purpose of the CW-FIT Middle School (CW-FIT MS) project is to conduct an Initial Efficacy evaluation of CW-FIT MS for improving middle school students' engagement, academic outcomes and socially appropriate behaviors while improving their teachers' classroom management practices. Classroom behavior problems top the list of concerns for teachers, who consistently rank students' disruptive, defiant, and aggressive behaviors as major barriers to teaching. Classroom management is particular...

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of Check-in/Check-out (CICO) for improving social, emotional, and academic behavior of elementary school students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). CICO is a manualized Tier 2 behavioral intervention commonly implemented within a multi-tiered framework and designed to improve the social and behavioral performance of students with emerging problem behavior. Research has indicated that CICO is a promising intervention fo...

The purpose of this project is to develop Para-Impact, a professional development package to train supervising teachers to utilize practice-based coaching (PBC) to improve paraprofessionals' implementation of systematic instruction for elementary students with moderate to severe developmental disabilities (MSDD). Students with MSDD - including those with autism, significant intellectual disabilities, and multiple disabilities - typically require frequent and intense exposure to evidence-base...

The purpose of this project is to develop the Middle School Class-wide Function-related Intervention Teams (MS CW-FIT), a multi-tiered, class-wide, positive behavioral group contingency intervention for improving middle school teachers' classroom management practices and students' engagement, behaviors, and academic performance. Effective middle school classroom management is critical because well-managed classrooms create opportunities to learn and foster student engagement, while poorly ma...