Kathleen Strickland-Cohen

Texas Christian University | TCU · College of Education

School-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) is an inclusive multi-tiered system of behavioral supports that has been widely adopted by K-12 schools in the United States. SWPBIS focuses on creating safe, equitable, and inclusive school environments and has been linked to both positive behavioral and academic outcomes for stud...

Schools have a finite number of resources each year to allocate towards the implementation of evidence-based practices (EBPs). Therefore, school leadership teams must carefully consider how resources are being allocated and how to maximize those resources when implementing EBPs within the context of multi-tiered systems of support, such as Positive...

One core feature of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS) is a systems-level teaming process for coordinating staff implementation of evidence-based practices and monitoring student progress across all three tiers. Prior research has shown schools that report regular teaming and team-based data use are more likely to successfully ado...

One critical feature of Schoolwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) is the inclusion of families in the implementation of schoolwide systems and practices. However, research on family engagement within PBIS has focused almost exclusively on families of students with intensive behavior support needs, with little emphasis on fosteri...

There is a dearth of research examining school and district factors associated with the abandonment of evidence-based practice in schools. In this mixed methods study, we surveyed 23 school personnel working with 30 schools that abandoned and then readopted school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS). Our aims were to identi...

To explore family–professional partnership within schoolwide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS), we conducted a qualitative analysis of the perceptions of family members of students with Tier 1 and Tier 2 behavior support needs related to events that impact the quality of their communication with teachers. Family member partici...

To explore the accessibility of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) for students with severe disabilities, we conducted a survey of 179 schools implementing SWPBIS during the 2015-2016 school year. Personnel from each school reported the frequency and level of importance of SWPBIS implementation across Likert-type sc...

In this 3-year prospective study, we tested the extent to which school-, practice-, and district-level variables predicted sustained implementation for schools in various stages of implementation of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) Tier 1 (universal) systems. Staff from 860 schools in 14 U.S. states completed a re...

Students with persistent challenging behavior are present in nearly every classroom. Teachers need the knowledge and skills to understand student behavior and intervene effectively. This article presents a framework to guide teachers in understanding student behavior and feasible tools for collecting data about the function of student behavior. Pra...

The purpose of this study was to determine if an experimental five-item measure of barriers to implementing and sustaining school-wide prevention practices, the Assessment of Barriers to Implementation and Sustainability in Schools (ABISS), would relate to objective measures of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) imp...

For decades, research has shown that function-based support is effective in reducing the frequency and severity of problematic student behaviors. One way for schools and districts to implement these supports effectively is by building local capacity to intervene with function-based interventions at the first signs of persistent problem behavior (i....

In this analysis of extant data from 3,011 schools implementing school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) across multiple years, we assessed the predictive power of various school characteristics and speed of initial implementation on sustained fidelity of implementation of SWPBIS at 1, 3, and 5 years. In addition, we part...

The purpose of this study was to identify the most important perceived enablers and barriers regarding sustainability of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports. School personnel representing 860 schools implementing or preparing to implement school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports completed an open-ended surve...

Transitions between daily activities can occasion or elicit problem behavior in individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Providing advance notice to signal an upcoming transition is a common practice in early and special education settings (e.g., Riffel 2010; Sandall et al. 2005). While the literature contains many demons...

Practice sustainability is important to ensure that students have continued access to evidence-based practices. In this study, respondents from a national sample of 860 schools at varying stages of implementing School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) were administered a research-validated measure of factors predicting su...

The purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which the School-Wide Universal Behavior Sustainability Index: School Teams (SUBSIST; McIntosh, Doolittle, Vincent, Horner, & Ervin, 2009), a measure of school and district contextual factors that promote the sustainability of school practices, demonstrated measurement invariance across groups o...

We evaluated the ability of typical school personnel with basic behavioral training to develop and implement function-based supports for students with mild to moderate problem behaviors. Descriptive results indicated that following four 1-hr training sessions, 13 participants were able to (a) identify interventions that were and were not functional...

The process of selecting, implementing, and scaling-up evidence-based practices is a major focus and difficult accomplishment for states. Renewed commitment to improving student outcomes has led directly to the need for effective practices implemented at scale. The funding decisions made at state, regional, and district levels remain a key to large...

In this article, we reviewed social validity in single-case research studies that focused on interventions for students who have either been identified as having, or as at-risk for emotional and behavioral disorders. This review focused on studies from four peer-reviewed journals known to publish single-case research with this population: the Journ...