Effective Low-Intensity Strategies to Enhance School Success: What Every Educator Needs to Know—A Closing Commentary

Teaching is an incredibly demanding vocation. For many, handling disruptive student behavior is one of the largest and most frequently mentioned sources of teacher stress and is a key factor in teachers’ decisions to leave the classroom (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003; Zabel & Zabel, 2002). Supporting teachers in this area may help slow the rate of teacher turnover and begin to address national teacher shortages. Even more importantly, providing teachers the skills to effectively and efficiently address disruptive behavior in the classroom will likely lead to improved short- and long-term student outcomes (Harrell, Leavell, van Tassel, & McKee, 2004; Oliver & Reschly, 2007; Simonsen, Fairbanks, Briesch, Myers, & Sugai, 2008).

On a daily basis, both general and special education teachers face classrooms that include students who are still developing the necessary social and academic skills to participate successfully in learning activities (McLeskey, Henry, & Hodges, 1999; Sawka, McCurdy, & Mannella, 2002; Sprague & Walker, 2000). Teachers are required to deliver rigorous academic instruction while simultaneously providing academic and social remediation in a classroom environment where some students are engaged in behaviors that regularly disrupt instruction. These constant interruptions to instruction and endless days of repeating expectations can lead to the most stress for teachers and result in reduced learning time for students. Learning to handle these disruptive student behaviors effectively while delivering instruction is an essential “life skill” for teachers.

The good news is that researchers have clearly identified a number of effective low-intensity strategies that, when implemented consistently, lead to significant improvements in student behavior (e.g., Simonsen et al., 2008). The strategies detailed in this special issue (i.e., behavior-specific praise, high-probability request sequence, precorrection, active supervision, instructional choice, and instructional feedback) can be easily embedded within academic instruction and have been shown to decrease student disruptive behavior and increase academic engagement.

Unfortunately, we know that many teachers obtain certification and enter the classroom without sufficient knowledge or opportunities to practice using these strategies (Freeman, Simonsen, Briere, & MacSuga-Gage, 2014; Oliver & Reschly, 2007). Furthermore, once hired, teachers are rarely provided effective professional development on specific classroom management skills such as the low-intensity strategies described in this special issue (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andrée, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009; Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007). As a field, it is essential that we prioritize providing teachers, coaches, administrators, and technical assistance providers with resources such as the ones in this special issue that enable them to effectively address disruptive behavior and maximize student learning in the classroom.

The outcomes associated with these strategies are maximized when they are aligned and implemented within a tiered system of support. A tiered framework increases the consistency with which students are taught clearly defined expectations across all classroom and school settings and experience consistent responses to both appropriate and inappropriate behavior. However, these strategies can also be effective even when implemented in just one classroom by one teacher! Even teachers who are working in schools without clear supports or not implementing an effective tiered framework can still expect these strategies to have a positive impact on their students.

The articles in this special issue are an excellent supplement to the more detailed classroom guides available on pbis.org. These guides provide comprehensive information on empirically supported classroom practices, systems to support teachers, and the use of data to guide the implementation of classroom practices. Truly supporting teachers requires that we provide both direct training in specific classroom practices and follow-up coaching to help teachers apply the new strategies effectively in the context of their classroom and academic instruction (Borgmeier, Loman, & Hara, 2016; Sutherland & Wehby, 2001).

The resources provided in this special issue can be used directly by classroom teachers, coaches, and administrators to gain a clear understanding of each practice and how it can be embedded in academic instruction to support student behavior. Each article provides clear examples and supplemental resources to support the implementation of each practice. Furthermore, a clear understanding of each practice makes it possible for peers or coaches to provide supportive and specific feedback on the use of these practices to teachers. In schools with formal tiered systems in place, these tools could be used to improve targeted, practice-specific coaching or provide resources for grade-level professional learning groups. Individual teachers can use these resources to self-recruit support around a specific practice by asking for feedback from a peer or by setting goals and self-monitoring their own use of a practice. I expect that these important easy-to-use practice guides will become “go to” resources for teachers, trainers, and coaches seeking to improve the implementation of effective classroom management practices and, in turn, support improvements in student behavior and learning.