Abstract
Play to Their Strengths
Adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who can converse and participate in many activities unfortunately lack the social skills to be successful interacting with kids their age. In addition, they can have very specific interests (e.g., state capitals or Greek mythology) that not only dominate their lives but that also further push away other people they would like to get to know. A research team at the University of California, Santa Barbara (Robert Koegel, Rosy Fredeen, Sunny Kim, John Danial, Derek Rubinstein, and Lynn Koegel), took a creative approach to helping three boys with ASD interact with their peers. Rather than discourage their sometimes obsessive interests (e.g., movie trivia, card games), these researchers helped set up social clubs around these interests and invited other students who did not have ASD to join. They found that these social clubs served as good vehicles for the students to display their interests and also helped them better interact with their peers.
Lead author Robert Koegel shared a few observations about their study. “Two things really interested us about this project: First, we were very pleasantly surprised to see that the students with ASD became highly valued members of their groups, and had a great deal of dignity and respect, in part because they possessed so much expertise related to the club activities; second, we noted that without any direct instructions or encouragement from any of us, many school peers enthusiastically joined in these club activities, and had a great deal of enjoyment throughout and beyond the time frame of the study. In short, this was a lot of fun for everyone.”
How Science Is Helping Schools
At the core of science—whether it is investigating new cancer drugs or how schools are performing—is the constant study and questioning about what “works” and what does not. This type of scrutiny is crucial for our educational system as it is the foundation for our future success. A group from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (Katrina Debnam, Elise Pas, and Catherine Bradshaw) sought to examine how 45 elementary schools in Maryland handled students with more challenging behaviors. All of the schools were participating in the highly effective program referred to as “School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports” (SWPBIS), and the researchers looked at how they handled the relatively few students who were not responding to the changes made in the schools. They found that most of the schools were following state and federal guidelines such as creating referral teams for these difficult students, but there were inconsistencies in how these teams were being used.
Researcher Katrina Debnam reported that, “It is extremely difficult to assess the quality of Tier 2 and 3 processes and programs being implemented within schools. There are so many factors to consider that can contribute to successful implementation of Tier 2 and 3 supports. It was a great learning experience using this measure to capture some of the amazing work schools are doing while also helping them identify areas where they can strive for improvement.”
What Is Important to Educators? Respect, Responsibility, and Safety
The responsibility of our schools is to educate our youth in ways that will help them be successful later in life. However, to achieve this goal, students need to behave in ways that facilitate their success and that do not interfere with the education of other students. For young students, educators need to make clear what their expectations are for how they should behave in the classroom and beyond. In an interesting study, researchers from the NorthWest Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports [PBIS] Network (Lori Lynass) and the University of Washington (Shu-Fei Tsai, Taylor Richman, and Douglas Cheney) sought to examine just what schools from around the United States expect of their students. They looked at the social expectations articulated by 155 elementary schools from each region of the country—each of which was participating in SWPBIS programs. They found that the majority of schools included the same three social expectations—respect, responsibility, and safety. In addition, specific behaviors were seen as important—for example, walk to the right, quiet voices, hands to self.
The first author of this study (Lori Lynass) commented, “I think we all believed the expectations and behavioral indicators to be somewhat similar but were surprised to see that across all regions nationally just how similar they really were. For me it really brought into question if we are lacking the discussions about culturally relevancy or if these expectations just happen to be very prominent across all cultures. When I am out working in schools I can see the expectations created and posted with little action taken, it is the teaching of the expectations and adult role modeling that bring them to life.”
Functional Communication Training Over a Quarter Century Later
More than 25 years ago, research began to show that if you looked at behavior problems as a way to communicate, then you could reduce these problems in a nonpunitive way. For example, if a student hits a teacher to get out of doing a task that is too difficult, teaching him to say “Help me” could lead to less aggression. This approach—called “functional communication training”—involves finding out what message problem behavior is communicating and then replacing the behavior problem with a better way to say the same thing. Hundreds of studies have been published since the initial research and researchers continue to examine ways to improve outcomes using this approach.
Researchers Dawn Davis, Laura Fredrick, Paul Alberto, and Roberto Gama from Georgia State University used this approach to help reduce the severe behavior problems of four adolescents who were very disruptive in their classrooms. An important feature of their study was that all assessments and the intervention were carried out in their regular classrooms. They also experimented with the way they responded to the behavior problems (e.g., hitting someone) as well as how they responded to their new ways of communicating (e.g., asking for a break from their work). They found significant improvements in the classroom behaviors of three of the four students.
Dawn Davis told us, “For one participant, whose problem behaviors were the most severe, a functional behavioral assessment (FBA) had been conducted in a clinical setting prior to participation in the current study. At that time the maintaining variable was determined to be unidentifiable. However, when we conducted a FBA in the student’s natural classroom setting, escape was identified as the maintaining variable among the experimental conditions. This was due to the existing establishing operations in the classroom that could not be artificially created in a clinical setting. Further, it was refreshing to use a powerful intervention package such as FCT, without the use of extinction, as a much more positive intervention approach and it is an exciting direction to take research.”
Catch Me (Being Good) If You Can
For decades, an important piece of advice for teachers who wanted to encourage well-mannered behavior on the part of students was “Catch them being good.” Numerous studies show that pointing out when students are well behaved and somehow rewarding them improves the likelihood that children will respond in a positive way. The problem over time is that given the many demands on a teacher, it is more likely that good behavior will be overlooked and only when a student becomes a problem will the teacher focus on something other than academics.
To address this difficulty, a number of different programs have been designed to help teachers focus on academics as well as student behavior. Robert Wright (Louisiana State University at Alexandria) and Barry McCurdy (Devereux Center for Effective schools, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania) designed and evaluated a version of one of these approaches—a program they call the “Caught Being Good Game” (CBGG). Essentially, this is a group game where the teacher—at various times unknown to the students—scans the room and points out if the class is being well behaved. If they are, then the class earns points that can be used to earn rewards such as pencils, candies, and so on. The researchers compared this approach with one that involved students losing points for misbehavior. They found improvements in student behavior for both programs across two classrooms.
First author Robert Wright reported, “To change classroom cultures of largely ignoring appropriate behavior and acknowledging disruption is a major undertaking. The development of an intervention (CBGG) that is focused on the instruction and reinforcement of children’s appropriate behavior while yielding decreases in disruptive behaviors was a major outcome of this project and a step in the right direction.”
Good Tools, Better Outcomes
As the school-wide positive behavior support approach to improving the social climate in schools continues to gain momentum, it is essential to know exactly how students respond to different programs. Many schools are now using daily progress reports (DPRs) to give feedback to students who have or are at risk for discipline problems. This type of frequent feedback on their behavior each day (e.g., were they respectful, responsible, and safe) is becoming an important tool for intervention as well as determining the success of different approaches. But just how accurate are these reports and which students are helped the most?
In a series of three research studies, Scott Stage from North Carolina State University; Doug Chaney, Lori Lynass, and Christine Mielenz from the University of Washington; and Andrea Flower from the University of Texas looked at how DPRs corresponded with reports from standardized tests and how they could be used to make predictions about what level of intensity of program would be successful with students. In general, they found that these reports could be valid reports of student behavior and were helpful for students—especially with those with problems such as aggression and rule breaking.
Researcher Scott Stage noted that, “I am proud of this article because it addresses several sources of validity as defined by Messick’s (1995) notion of unified validity in regards to an RtI behavioral intervention, and specifically, the social consequences of the decisions adults make in regard to the data they use.”