REL Central Ask A REL Response

“Minor misbehavior causes frustration for many teachers and can serve as the catalyst for escalating into a public confrontation between student and teacher. This confrontation can be caused by teacher overreaction to minor misbehavior. When teachers take the initiative and predetermine their response to misbehavior, they reduce and possibly eliminate some minor misbehavior. This article suggests six simple strategies that teachers can implement to respond more positively to minor misbehavior, which helps reduce misbehavior and avoid a confrontation with students.”

“We used a multiple baseline design across participants to determine if teacher greetings would reduce the latency to task engagement. Three participants were identified by their respective teachers as having difficulty initiating task-appropriate engagement at the beginning of class. Latency was measured from teacher greeting until the participant was actively engaged for 5 consecutive seconds. Results showed that teacher greetings were effective at reducing latency to task engagement for all participants.”

“A multiple baseline design across participants was used to determine how teacher greetings affected on-task behavior of 3 middle school students with problem behaviors. Momentary time sampling was used to measure on-task behavior during the first 10 min. of class. Teacher greetings produced increases in students’ on-task behavior from a mean of 45% in baseline to a mean of 72% during the intervention phase. Teacher greetings represent an antecedent manipulation that can easily be implemented in classrooms to improve students’ on-task behavior.”

“Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process by which children and adults learn to understand and manage emotions, maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. This is the third in a series of four related reports about what is known about SEL programs for students ages 3–8. The report series addresses four issues raised by the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Mid-Atlantic’s Early Childhood Education Research Alliance: characteristics of effective SEL programs (part 1), implementation strategies and state and district policies that support SEL programming (part 2), teacher and classroom strategies that contribute to social and emotional learning (part 3), and outcomes of social and emotional learning among different student populations and settings (part 4). This report provides educators with teacher and classroom strategies to promote social and emotional learning.”

“This paper presents the results of a function-based study initiated by a general education teacher to reduce a general education student’s out-of-seat behavior. Procedures included direct observation, data collection, functional behavior assessment using a Functional Assessment Protocol (FAP; Schroeder, n.d.), hypothesis development, and creating an intervention based on the hypothesis. The intervention, adapted from Wong and Wong (2001), involved greeting the target student at the classroom door and engaging him in conversation on any topic with comments from the teacher ranging from compliments to encouragement, coupled with verbal prompts (subtle, but direct instructions regarding teacher expectations). The intervention reduced the student’s out-of-seat behavior.”