Abstract
Academics and behavior are inextricably linked, and as such, management of behavior should be considered not as an addition to the teacher’s repertoire of skills but as an integral foundational component of effective instruction. Paradoxically, teachers report that students with challenging behavior are both their greatest challenge and that behavior management is the skill with which they are least prepared in their teacher preparation programs. In this article, the authors first review a rationale for considering high probability practices as those that provide the best probability for student success. Next, they present a set of key teacher-implemented management strategies as an essential part of the curriculum for any prospective teacher.
Although effective classroom management has been long-identified as a key component of effective classrooms (e.g., Brophy, 1979), the general notion of managing student behavior has maintained a generally negative connotation within teacher education (Agostinone-Wilson, 2006; Brantlinger & Danforth, 2006). Although managing classrooms and individual student behavior has been more closely tied to special education preparation (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 2002), even this has likely been more the case when considering students with behavioral disorders and autism (Landrum, Tankersley, & Kauffman, 2003). The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of and rationale for considering behavior and classroom management as part of effective instruction. In doing so, two main points are made with regard to training classroom management as a core component of special education teacher preparation across focus areas.
The first main point is in regard to the nature of classroom management as a process or set of practices. The evidence before us is abundantly clear that academics and behaviors are inextricably linked (Najaka, Gottfredson, & Wilson, 2002; Siperstein, Wiley, & Forness, 2011). As such, management of behavior should be considered not as an addition to the teacher’s repertoire of skills but as an integral foundational component of effective instruction. In combination, the facts that (a) poor instruction has been repeatedly cited as a major contributor to problem behavior (Gest & Gest, 2005; McEvoy & Welker, 2000) and (b) poor management is associated with poor student outcomes (C. E. Cameron, Connor, Morrison, & Jewkes, 2008) reinforce the logic of an integrated model of management and instruction.
The second point is in relation to what our preservice special education teachers will likely experience in their career. Although the case could be made for embedding classroom management into the instructional curriculum for all teachers, or even all school personnel, special education teachers play an especially important role in the school as, for good or bad, they are increasingly expected to act in a consultative role in schools (Idol, 2006), with a good deal of that consultation time dedicated to behavior (Oliver & Reschly, 2014). Regardless of the population with whom they are trained to work, our special education teachers will enter the profession with classroom and behavior management likely among their chief duties.
Effective Classroom Management
Classroom management is solely the responsibility of the teacher, and that responsibility includes both the selection and implementation of effective practices. As will be presented herein, classroom management and instruction can be conceived of as one and the same. Given the critical relationship between effective instructional practices and student outcomes, the selection of instructional practices simply cannot be left to chance. Our profession must look to a scientific model to aid us in selecting and implementing instructional practices.
In this article, we provide a brief review of the literature with regard to effective teacher instructional practices associated with high rates of student success and will provide a rationale for using science to guide us in selecting and implementing practices that afford our students with the greatest opportunities to experience social and academic success. Again, the purpose of this article is not to provide a comprehensive review of the literature. Rather, it is simply to outline a basic logic for addressing classroom and behavior management as core competencies within a comprehensive teacher training program.
Is a Practice Effective?
Ultimately, effective practices are those that create replicable and predictable effects on student success. When considering the overwhelming array of potential “evidence-based” practices, however, it is sometimes difficult to discern which should be prioritized when providing training to our preservice teachers. Clearly, not all purported evidence-based practices are equal—some simply provide a higher probability of student success than others (Cook, Tankersley, & Landrum, 2009; Odom et al., 2005). Even entities such as the What Works Clearinghouse often conflate disparate practices as being equal based upon somewhat arbitrary criteria (Shoenfeld, 2006; Stockard, 2010).
Consider that a group of people are asked to run a race and that anyone who crosses a finish line ahead of some predetermined timeline would be labeled an evidence-based runner. Although some are very fast and some very slow, in the end, a group of people do make it to the finish line within the time criteria, and thus, all are evidence-based runners. Plainly though, even among those labeled as evidence-based runners, some are better runners than others. The point is, when considering what practices to teach to our prospective teachers, the focus must be on those practices that provide the biggest and most efficient effects as those are simply more likely to have a meaningful and sustainable impact on student success (Hattie, 2009).
One method of comparing the effects across different interventions and studies is to consider the size of the impact it has on students. Defined simply as the average of the effects (post minus pre or experimental minus control scores) divided by the standard deviation of all scores, an effect size is a standardized way of comparing the impact of interventions. As John Hattie (2009) has shown, the average student will experience growth of approximately 40% of a standard deviation (effect size .4) per academic year. Thus, any intervention with an effect size of less than .4 will provide no visible effect, even if it is “evidence-based.” Any exploration of the key features of effective classroom management must be conducted with attention to the comparative effect sizes of all potential teacher practices.
Although there are clearly limits to using effect size as the sole arbiter of effective practice, it provides one simple metric for considering the probability of positive effects at any level of intervention. Considering the teacher wager (Scott, 2016), if a teacher was told that student success tomorrow would result in a US$10,000 salary bonus, what actions would maximize the probability of the teacher winning the money? This simple twist on the question of effectiveness puts the onus squarely on the teacher to determine probability. To be clear, there are no sure things, but some practices do provide higher probabilities for success than do others. Rather than simply choosing the single practice with the largest effect size, teachers must carefully and thoughtfully consider the needs of an individual classroom and piece together the strategies that best fit the unique needs presented.
High Probability Management Practices
The teacher’s job is to create instruction that maximizes the probability of success for students. Although there are no sure things, it is clear that some things work better than others, and it is incumbent upon teacher preparation programs to model and teach those practices that have empirical evidence supporting not only that it is effective but also that it is more effective than alternatives. In fact, this is a basic tenet and legal foundation of special education. In the classroom, the teacher has control of both the learning environment and the delivery of instruction. Thus, these two areas are explored below in relation to practices that are largely deemed to represent high probability practice in terms of the likelihood of facilitating success.
The argument could be made that school-wide systems of positive behavior support (PBIS) provide the content necessary for effectively dealing with behaviors. PBIS and other multitiered systems, however, are largely conceptual, providing a framework for effective intervention rather than a set of practices. Furthermore, the primary tier of PBIS at which effective teaching of behavior is a feature has focused overwhelmingly on common areas rather than classrooms. To be certain, the PBIS model is a perfect fit for any discussion of effective classroom management and instruction, but such content is not inherent within the typical PBIS content in teacher training programs.
The Teaching Environment
The teaching environment is comprised of all the routines, schedules, and physical attributes of the classroom—including furniture arrangement, student seating, and teacher proximity. Although this potentially represents a virtually endless array of possible manipulations (e.g., adjusting the temperature, wall color, ambient noise levels, etc.), there are some very basic environmental considerations that provide large probabilities for facilitating student success (Scott & Hirn, 2014). Foremost in considerations of the environment are those features that are both most effective and under the immediate control of the teacher.
Consistency
The degree to which the daily classroom routines occur in the same order, at the same times, and in the same way each day is an important predictor of student success (Bull, Feldman, & Solity, 2013; Buyse, Verschueren, Doumen, Van Damme, & Maes, 2008; Fairbanks, Simonsen, & Sugai, 2008; Jones, Jones, & Vermette, 2013). Of course, the degree to which consistency is important is related to the challenges presented by the student in a given classroom. Although a mild degree of consistency might be sufficient in some classrooms, students with more challenging behaviors may require consistency with schedules that are detailed down the minute and spelled out on the board (Scott, 2016).
From a probability perspective, the key is that the students come to predict what will happen so that it becomes a routine and a habit. For students who have difficulty transitioning into new subjects, teachers can increase successful transitions by having a consistent routine for when to transition, writing the schedule on the board, and calling attention to it with verbal reminders throughout the class. These are not difficult to implement and are not beyond what most experienced teachers would consider common sense. These, however, are not behaviors that are necessarily taught as part of what should be a standard procedure, particularly for teachers who are likely to work with students with challenging behavior.
Physical arrangements
Where the teacher and particular students are located, the students’ desk arrangement, and how well the teacher is able to monitor students are all important considerations in the classroom environment, but ones that typically get little to no consideration in teacher training programs (Oliver & Reschly, 2014). As a general rule, teacher movement about the room to maintain frequent proximity to all students is an effective practice for increasing student engagement (Cangelosi, 2013; Conroy, Asmus, Ladwig, Sellers, & Valcante, 2004). The teacher should continue movement as much as possible, taking advantage of frequent passes to provide additional prompting and feedback to students who are particularly prone to challenging behaviors. In addition, movement through the room allows the teacher to more efficiently assess the degree to which students are engaged and understand lesson content.
Active supervision refers to the teacher’s purposeful and continuous supervision of the entire classroom at all times (Haydon, & Kroeger, 2016; Oliver & Reschly, 2014). When the teacher is looking at students, the probability of misbehavior is lower—providing opportunities to provide feedback for positive behavior. One way of facilitating active supervision is to consider whether all students in the classroom believe that you could make eye contact at any point in less than 1 second (Scott, 2016). This requires that the teacher positions himself or herself in such a way that any student could be easily observed with just a quick turn of the head. An additional consideration here is with the type and arrangement of furniture as the teacher must insure that there are no barriers to easy eye contact with students from any vantage point in the room, including times when the teacher is seated at his or her desk. Infusing this content into preservice teacher preparation can be accomplished by having course instructors discuss and model these practices.
Whether the desks are arranged in rows, circles, or groupings is important only in the context of the expectations for whatever task is at hand. Obviously, group work is facilitated by groupings, and independent work is likely more successful when not seated in groups—but these are not always arrangements that the teacher has control over as furniture style often dictates this. Teachers, however, can assign students to sit in particular locations to avoid predictable problem pairings or locations (Kriegel, 2016). Special education teachers must consult with their general education counterparts to consider the necessity of assigning seats to maximize student success. Seat assignment is most effectively introduced as students enter the room or at the beginning of an activity rather than in a reactive way during the lesson, which tends to predict confrontations that are time-consuming and predictive of larger problems. There are, however, times when misbehavior is disruptive to the point that a change of seat assignments may be necessary midlesson. As with all environmental considerations, the practices should be taught as potentially beneficial actions to be considered in terms of the unique individual features of the classroom and student.
Instructional Practices
Although social order in the classroom is necessary to promote academic achievement, effective instruction is also necessary to promote social order. The link between student behavior and academic success is well founded in the research literature (Siperstein et al., 2011). Logically, students who are not successful with academic tasks are less interested in the lesson and have a greater incentive to engage in behaviors that either distract the teacher or result in an escape from instruction (Gest & Gest, 2005). If the teacher’s job is to maximize student success, then effective classroom management must involve effective teaching practices to drive curricular content for both academic and social behaviors.
Teaching practices are those behaviors in which the teacher engages during the delivery of instruction, and there are well-established links between these practices and student behavior (C. E. Cameron et al., 2008). These include how the teacher presents instruction and the degree to which instruction is designed to be engaging and effective to facilitate individual student success. Both academic and behavioral content are inherent in each lesson. Thus, teachers must take care to use the tenets of effective instructional delivery in both realms as part of an integrated focus. Although a full discussion of effective instruction is beyond the scope of this article, there are some basic tenets that enjoy particularly strong support for facilitating student success.
Direct and explicit instruction
The available empirical evidence makes clear that, when working on new behaviors, teaching students how to deal with particular problems is far more effective than simply asking students to explore a problem to find solutions on their own (Hattie, 2009). Furthermore, selecting relevant examples from the real environment for modeling enhances the probability of mastery (Engelmann, 2007). The most effective instruction is delivered directly to students in a clear and concrete manner. Teachers should model all skills and expectations—whether academic or behavioral in nature (Brophy, 2006) and that modeling should include verbal explanations to accompany physical demonstrations.
Within empirical literature, there is no difference in those teacher behaviors that are known to maximize the probability of success in reading (e.g., National Reading Panel, 2000) and those that are known to maximize the probability of success with behavior (e.g., Simonsen et al., 2014). Effective instruction of any behavior begins with a rationale (i.e., why this is important in student’s life), connections to prior knowledge, and a clear explanation of critical rules that are then modeled and demonstrated by the teacher with frequent questions and tasks to foster student interest and engagement. Next, the teacher guides students through practice in a manner to promote high levels of success with teacher acknowledgment. These successful practice opportunities facilitate a confidence that enhances independent work with more authentic examples (Scott, 2016).
Engagement
The degree to which students are actively engaged with the curricular content during instruction is perhaps the most powerful predictor of student achievement (Berliner, 1990). Although some students are more inclined to be engaged than others, the responsibility for engagement falls on the teacher (Pianta, 1996). Making the curriculum relevant to students’ lives, connecting to prior learning, guiding lessons to provide high levels of student success, and demonstrating a genuine interest and excitement all encourage student engagement. Teachers, however, can also be more direct in how they create engagement for all students within a lesson by providing students with opportunities to respond in some way related to the curriculum.
Teacher-provided opportunities for students to respond to the curriculum include questions, commands, or directions that set the occasion for student thought and response (i.e., interaction with the curriculum). These curriculum-related prompts can be provided to either the group or an individual student and have been shown to be associated with improved academic and behavioral outcomes (Haydon, Mancil, & Van Loan, 2009; Kern & Clemens, 2007; Partin, Robertson, Maggin, Oliver, & Wehby, 2010). For example, teachers may tell students, “Raise your green card if you think this one is correct” or “Make one yourself and hold it up.” In either case, the teacher has constructed a lesson that involves student engagement as part of the delivery.
Questioning students, by itself, is not necessarily an effective strategy for student engagement (Hattie, 2009). The key to effective engagement is in promoting high levels of student interest and success. Difficult questions may actually have the opposite effect, creating failures that promote student disinterest and escape-motivated behavior problems. Effective questions are delivered frequently but with a thought toward generating student success—which is simply an opportunity for the teacher to provide praise to increase student success.
Because naturally occurring rates of opportunities to respond (OTR) have been generally found to be low (Scott, Hirn, & Cooper, 2017), recommendations have simply focused on a “more is better” platform. Recent research on OTR as a practice, however, has shown that rates at or above 3 per minute are generally predictive of student engagement (Gunter, Hummel, & Conroy, 1998; Haydon et al., 2009; Partin et al., 2010; Sutherland, Alder, & Gunter, 2003). Because observed rates in typical school classrooms are well below 1 per minute during instruction (Scott et al., 2017), this is an issue deserving attention. Again, preservice teachers must not only be exposed to this information but must also see effective demonstrations from their instructors and have opportunities to practice with regular performance feedback.
Feedback
Another empirically derived measure of teacher-initiated engagement is the provision of performance feedback to students, including both verbal and gestural feedback for student academic and social behavior (Beaman & Wheldall, 2000). Despite overwhelming empirical support in terms of positive effects on student achievement (J. Cameron, Banko, & Pierce, 2001), education continues to fall prey to unsubstantiated critiques of feedback (e.g., Kohn, 1999, 2001). In his meta-analysis of instructional practices, Hattie (2009) found that feedback had an effect size of .73, ranking it in the top 10 of all possible instructional practices in terms of facilitating student success. As has been discussed, effect size alone does not warrant blind adoption of any practice. In the case of feedback, however, the evidence in favor of its effect combined with the simplicity of its delivery presents a very compelling case for school-wide adoption as a high probability practice. This is a message that preservice teachers need to hear in a repetitive manner and be asked to demonstrate as a core competency of effective instruction. Importantly, however, positive feedback is only warranted when students are successful, and thus is only useful when instruction is effective.
Like OTR, despite the supporting research, instructional feedback appears to be an underused teaching tool (Scott, Alter, & Hirn, 2011; Stichter et al., 2009; Sutherland, Wehby, & Yoder, 2002). Positive feedback has been associated with improving student’s academic and behavioral outcomes and decreasing problem behaviors (Apter, Arnold, & Swinson, 2010; Gable, Hester, Rock, & Hughes, 2009). Paradoxically, teacher practices with students with challenging behaviors have largely involved less rather than more engagement and feedback (Sutherland et al., 2002).
Although negative feedback is also an important component of instruction, there are two important points to consider. First, the manner in which negative feedback is delivered is important. Reprimands are more predictive of future negative teacher–student interaction than is correction (i.e., reteaching; Nelson & Roberts, 2000). Second, the continued use of negative feedback for a given behavior is an indication that instruction is not working (Scott, 2016). Thus, effective instruction is associated with more positive than negative feedback. Rates of feedback, however, have continually been found to be low and skewed in favor of negatives (Levy & Vaughn, 2002; Scott et al., 2011).
The ratio of positive to negative feedback is calculated by dividing positive feedback by negative feedback (Fredrickson & Losada, 2005), providing an index of the degree to which rates of feedback are reflective of an overall positive or negative balance. This is important given the research indicating that overall balances of positive to negative feedback ranging from 3:1 to 6:1 are predictive of future success (Cacioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1999; Fredrickson, 2000; Rozin & Royzman, 2001). In fact, as a general rule, the literature in the area of PBIS recommends positive to negative feedback ratios in the range of 3:1 to 6:1 (Gable et al., 2009; Stichter et al., 2009; Walker, Ramsey, & Gresham, 2004). In typical classrooms, ratios of positive to negative feedback have been shown to be approximately 3:1 at elementary, 2:1 at middle school, and an alarming 0.66:1 at high school (Scott et al., 2017). This means that the average high school student receives more negative feedback than positive feedback while in the classroom.
Implications for Teacher Preparation
Classroom management is the responsibility of the classroom teacher. In general, the teacher has the autonomy to select and implement the practices they use in the classroom to promote academic and social success for their students. To be certain, teachers not only have a choice in the practices they implement but also have a responsibility to select and implement with fidelity the practices that will give the highest probability of success for their students. As stated previously, science has given us a great deal of evidence about a myriad of effective classroom management practices that, if implemented with fidelity, have the potential to improve student outcomes. Even with empirical evidence to support their use, however, many of these practices do not find their way into the classroom setting, at least not to the degree necessary to facilitate sustained academic or social behavioral change in students.
Given the importance of using effective classroom management practices, it seems inconceivable that teachers would exit a teacher preparation program with little training in many of the practices discussed herein. Research, however, suggests that most teachers actually leave their teacher preparation programs having received very little training in effective classroom management practices (Freeman, Simonsen, Briere, & MacSuga-Gage, 2014; Oliver & Reschly, 2010). To this point, teachers who leave the profession within their first 5 years of service consistently cite difficulty with classroom management as a primary reason for leaving (Wei, Darling-Hammond, & Adamson, 2010). This would suggest that many of our teachers entering the profession may not have the skills necessary to effectively manage student behavior in the classroom (Scott et al., 2011).
This raises legitimate concerns about the way that instruction in classroom management practices is handled in teacher preparation programs. It also begs the question of how to affect change in teacher preparation to ensure that teachers have the ability to implement classroom management practices in a consistent and widespread manner. Again, if effective classroom and behavior management skills are viewed in isolation and as being separate from effective academic instructional practices, they will be treated as such in teacher preparation programs. Students will be required to take one, and in some extreme cases, two classroom and/or behavior management courses as part of their teacher preparation program. Even so, it is likely that very little context will be provided on how these practices are part of the larger picture. As a matter of foundation, management practices must be incorporated into instructional practices across various content areas. Teachers must be trained to consider teaching of social behavior in the same manner as academics, using effective instruction as the foundation of classroom management.
The generally accepted practice of having preservice special education teachers take one isolated course on classroom and behavior management should be reconsidered given what is known about effective instructional practice. Very often, student misbehaviors are attempts to escape failure with the lesson content (Gest & Gest, 2005; McEvoy & Welker, 2000). Effective instruction creates higher rates of success relative to failure, decreasing the impetus for students to act out (Colvin & Scott, 2015). In short, science suggests that certain instructional procedures offer a greater probability of student success in both the behavioral and academic areas. Given this, and given the fact that educators need to be able to effectively manage the behavior of students within the context of content area instruction, it would seem warranted for teacher preparation programs to examine the way classroom and behavior management is taught to preservice teachers.
In addition to a course or courses focused specifically on classroom management, it is recommended that effective classroom and behavior management practices be integrated across the teacher preparation curriculum. This would promote a shift from viewing behavior management procedures as practices designed to be used in isolation to viewing these procedures as part of the overall instructional model that integrates the use of effective, science-based instructional practices across all content areas to maximize student success.
Conclusion
Classroom behavior and academic performance are inextricably linked (Najaka et al., 2002; Siperstein et al., 2011). Both special educators and those who train special educators in teacher preparation programs, however, tend to view classroom and behavior management as a secondary skill, something that must be done in addition to core academic instruction. To be certain, the existing evidence suggests that many of the same instructional behaviors that increase the probability for academic success (e.g., physical room arrangement, high rates of student engagement, positive feedback) also increase the probability of behavioral success. In addition, special educators are going to be called upon to provide consultation and mentorship in the areas of classroom and behavior management to other educators and administrators in their school settings. This fact increases the need for special educators to transition to the workforce with an ample supply of high probability instructional practices in their repertoire.
As with other fields, education should turn to science to determine the effectiveness of practices and procedures. Using science as a guide, there are some basic instructional procedures that provide a greater opportunity for student success. These procedures can be summarized as being teacher-driven to provide high rates of (a) consistency, (b) engagement between the teacher and student, (c) student success, and (d) teacher feedback. Oftentimes, however, teachers are leaving their teacher preparation programs ill-equipped to effectively manage student behavior (Zabel & Zabel, 2002). This may, at least in part, be due to the current model of teacher preparation for special education that addresses classroom and behavior management in isolation, taught separately from other teaching methodology coursework. The result is an inadvertent increase in the research-to-practice gap that is evident when considering behavior management practices in schools (Banks & Zionts, 2009).
The importance of classroom and behavior management skills for special education teachers is well established, and teachers will be called on to implement effective practices and assist others in doing the same. In addition, not all special educators are coming out of teacher preparation programs prepared to effectively implement high probability classroom and behavior management practices even though effective practices have been clearly identified (and summarized in Table 1). Given this, two things are evident. First, the field of special education, and education in general, should continue to use science to identify those foundational practices deemed to provide high probability for success of both academic and social behaviors. Second, special education teacher preparation programs should reconsider how effective instructional procedures are taught to preservice special educators. Rather than teaching classroom and behavior management procedures in isolation, separate from other teaching methodology courses, an integrated model of management and instruction in which behavior management procedures are taught as instructional procedures, integrated across the preprofessional curriculum may be more powerful. In turn, this may ultimately increase the probability of success for our special education teachers and their students.
Key Components of High Probability Classroom Practices for Instruction and Management.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.