Terrance M. Scott

• PhD
• Professor at University of Louisville

Students who are actively engaged in learning have a higher probability of academic and behavioral success in the classroom. One effective teaching practice that increases student engagement is providing students with frequent opportunities to respond (OTR). This article provides practitioners with a range of OTR strategies that include verbal, non...

Classroom management is cited as a frequent concern by many teachers. These concerns with classroom management are commonly rooted in a struggle to effectively engage students and a failure to form authentic relationships with students. Centering Culturally Relevant Pedagogy is crucial when effectively engaging and building authentic relationships...

Student academic deficits and problem behaviors have long been demonstrated to be closely related. What is not as clear is the degree to which teacher behaviors are predictive of both academic and behavioral outcomes. Using direct observations of teachers in over 1500 unique elementary and secondary classroom instructional settings, rates of identi...

In this article, we provide both a critical analysis of and logical response to a set of the most typical school-based objections to the effective use of positive reinforcement. For example, one objection is that positive reinforcement amounts to bribery. Practitioners are provided with clear and concise arguments refuting each objection and data-i...

Providing support to students with challenging behaviors is a critical focus of classroom teachers’ success. Finding ways to prevent and mediate academic and behavioral difficulties is a high priority area for both research and practice. The focus of this study is on the effects of implementation of Orton–Gillingham Reading intervention strategies...

Much attention has been paid to the role of effective instruction in classroom settings and there is compelling evidence that teacher clarity, student engagement, feedback, and active supervision are keys to student success. In positive behavior interventions and support (PBIS) schools, these principles are applied school-wide with students receivi...

PBIS is has been consistently correlated with reductions in student exclusion including suspensions, expulsions, poor attendance, and high school dropout rates. However, school-wide strategies that do not specifically involve effective instruction in academic areas are unlikely to result in increased academic achievement. To address this reality, m...

The current body of research on classroom environments identifies key proactive instructional strategies that when implemented effectively can reduce the likelihood of problematic behavioral incidents by students. One strategy known as active supervision has demonstrated positive outcomes across school settings, including classrooms, hallways, cafe...

Analyses of special education services for students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD) conducted prior to and after the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142) pointed to significant short comings in service provision such as high rates of segregated placement and poorly prepared personnel. In 1991,...

There is a long and persistent gap between the academic achievement of White and Black students in America’s schools. Further, Black students are suspended from school at a rate that is more than three times greater than White students. While there has been some suggestion that perhaps teacher-student racial matching may be part of a solution, the...

Teachers report that students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) present challenges that are among the greatest they face on a daily basis. Research, however, clearly shows that teachers routinely receive little or no training in how to effectively work with students with challenging behaviors. This is particularly frustrating when consi...

Teachers’ classroom management practices have a direct impact on their students’ probability of success. Evidence-based classroom management practices include (a) active instruction and supervision of students (i.e., teaching), (b) opportunities for students to respond, and (c) feedback to students. In this study, we examined the degree to which te...

While functional behavior assessment (FBA) has been a part of special education law and embedded in Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) since 1997, a precise definition of what actions or processes constitute a legal FBA has never been adequately addressed in the law. This article provides an overview of the underlying logic of FBA l...

A functional behavior assessment is a process for identifying events in the environment that reliably precede (i.e., antecedents) and follow (i.e., consequences) problem behavior. This information is used to develop an intervention plan. There are two types of antecedents—triggers and setting events. Triggers are antecedent events that happen just...

In the United States, federal funding under Title 1 is provided to schools to improve academic achievement for disadvantaged students. Many students attending schools eligible for Title 1 funding are from families in poverty and at risk for negative outcomes. Identifying instructional factors that mitigate this risk must be a priority for teachers...

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 behavi...

A survey study of 248 educators in four states was conducted to identify respondents' formal training, use, and perceived effectiveness of 37 evidence-based classroom management practices within four general categories: (a) antecedent-based, (b) instructionally based, (c) consequence-based, and (d) self-management. Results indicated that, on averag...

This article is a review of functional behavior assessment studies in general education setting for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. The studies were assessed in accordance with published standards for evidence-based practices. Overall, few studies met criteria for inclusion in this review and even fewer studies included all three...

Effective behavior management is necessary to ensure students are engaged with instruction. Students cannot learn if they are not engaged. Although the relationship between effective behavior management and positive student behavior is well established, the relationship between behavior management and increased academic achievement, including early...

Classrooms are complex social systems in which teachers and students interact in a variety of ways across contexts. Of issue is both the nature and frequency of teachers’ use of what typically are considered effective instructional practice and the typical manner in which students respond to different teacher behaviors. This study expands upon earl...

Effective instruction is a critical predictor of student achievement. As students with exceptionalities such as emotional and behavioral disorders and learning disabilities, who typically struggle with academic achievement, spend increasing amounts of general education settings, the need for precise instructional behaviors becomes more imperative....

Across the modern history of the field of Special Education and Emotional/Behavioral Disorders (EBD), direct observation of student and educator behavior has been an essential component of the diagnostic process, student progress monitoring, and establishing functional and statistical relationships within research. This article provides an overview...

Many teachers enter the field without sufficient training in classroom management and continue to experience challenges throughout their careers. Therefore, school-based leaders need a multi-tiered support (MTS) framework to (a) provide training to all teachers in classroom management (Tier 1), (b) identify teachers who require additional assistanc...

When dealing with children who exhibit challenging behaviors there are no known interventions that works for all students or at all times. Thus, intervention for these students is often implemented in much of a trial and error manner. This paper provides a logic for considering probability as a factor in selecting strategies. Understanding that som...

The use of functional behavioral assessment (FBA) is an effective tool to address a wide range of severe behavior problems of students at risk for or with emotional disabilities (ED). However, the transformation of a procedure proven effective under highly-controlled clinical conditions to a practical and effective strategy for use in applied setti...

This article aimed to review the literature and examine and compare the effects of choral and individual responding. Six studies met inclusion criteria and were included in this review. Participants in the study comprise students with various disabilities, male and female, and between pre-K and 12th grade. Results indicate a generally positive rela...

Students in alternative, residential, and correctional settings present challenges in the classroom and facility due to the complexity and intensity of their behaviors. In addition, the factors typically associated with these settings including crowding, inconsistency, and conflicting staff perspectives on education and discipline present challenge...

School-wide positive behavior support (PBS) is a systems approach to prevention and intervention involving multiple levels of support. At the universal level (all students), prevention of behavior problems involves four very basic steps that are repeated with smaller numbers of students and greater intensity as directed by data. The first step is t...

Teachers report that the behaviors that they are forced to deal with on a daily basis are not typically violent or intense but are frequent and usurp great amounts of instructional time. Office discipline referrals provide a well-established method of tracking student behavior problems across the school, allowing for deeper analysis of contextual p...

:Classrooms are complex social systems in which teachers and students interact in a variety of ways across contexts. Of issue is both the nature and frequency of teachers' use of what typically are considered effective instructional practice and the typical manner in which students respond to different teacher behaviors. This study expands upon ear...

Dealing with difficult behavior is a matter of awareness of the factors involved in prediction, prevention, and instruction. This means three things: Teachers know, or can be assisted in thinking through the environmental events and contexts that are associated with higher probabilities of problem behavior. Second, teachers can actively manipulate...

:Although the conceptual foundations of PBS at the universal level have been widely described and presented in the literature, secondary and tertiary interventions have been presented through very limited examples. This paper defines the key features of secondary and tertiary interventions and presents a decision-making process to guide schools thr...

Functional behavior assessment (FBA), although mandated by federal law in situations involving students with emotional and behavioral disorders, is not well defined in the literature in terms of how it should best be undertaken in widespread practice in schools. Functional behavior assessment can be defined as a process for determining the reason o...

Students who are socially competent are more likely to experience school success than those who are not. Students with social deficits experience frequent failures with both peers and adults and often require explicit social skills instruction. Because social skills instruction programs taught in isolation rarely result in successful skill generali...

An alternating treatments design was used to investigate the effects of three types of opportunities to respond (i.e., indi-vidual, choral, and mixed responding) on sight words and syllable practice in six elementary students with behavioral problems. During the mixed responding condition, five out of six students demonstrated a lower rate of disru...

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight issues related to the current policy, practice, and research in the area of functional behavioral assessment (FBA) for students with (or at risk for) emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD). Although a substantial research base exists validating the effectiveness of FBA and function-based interventions for s...

Following descriptive functional assessment procedures, a brief structural analysis was used to confirm the hypothesized antecedent conditions that preceded problem behavior across three children enrolled in Head Start classrooms. A withdrawal design investigated the effectiveness of antecedent-based interventions to reduce disruptive behaviors and...

Educators face increasing challenges in educating today's youth. Schools must cope with myriad challenges, including budget cuts, increased student enrollment, and an increasing range of student skill levels. In addition, discipline problems are a growing concern for educators. Although the relatively rare instances of school violence and other ext...

When considering behavior supports for students whose behaviors have not responded to primary- or secondary-tier interventions, the need to align interventions with assessment information becomes crucially important. If effective interventions are not developed, these students are likely to experience a range of negative outcomes, including academi...

The management of a large number of children in a nonclassroom or common setting (e.g., gymnasium, auditorium) can present a challenge to school staff. This article describes a set of commonsense solutions that were implemented with 400 elementary students in a before-school common setting. The solutions are described and the results of the interve...

Although the federal government recently mandated the use of functional behavior assessment (FBA) and positive behavioral interventions for students, this legislation has not defined the key features of FBA and has provided little guidance for how such procedures should be completed in a public school setting. As a result, recent evidence suggests...

School-wide positive behavior support (SWPBS) currently is implemented in over 7,000 elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the United States. Among the beneficial outcomes reported by these schools are dramatic reductions in office discipline referral rates, increased instructional time for students formerly removed for disciplinary reaso...

This article provides an analysis of issues related to personal dignity and social validity in schools. Specifically, dignity is defined in terms of individual success and independence, while social validity is defined in terms of the system as a whole. These definitions are explored in the context of schoolwide systems of positive behavior support...

Functional behavioral assessment (FBA) was developed and researched in clinical settings as an effective strategy to identify interventions that both manage inappropriate behavior and teach appropriate replacement behavior, but is it equally effective in school settings, which typically involve much less structure and much greater social complexity...

Although FBA has been a familiar term to those in special education for over 30 years, its formal inclusion into IDEA is relatively recent. Currently, agreement as to the nature, context, and application of the FBA process is, at best, confusing and, at worst, inadequate to direct elective practice in schools. An analysis of the issues that define...

Teaching in a public school is a demanding job as the multiple dynamics of a classroom can be a challenge. In addition to addressing the challenging behaviors that many students without disabilities exhibit, more and more students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) are being included in the general education classroom.Effective instructi...

Systems of positive behavior support (PBS) that positively affect student performance involve consensus among stakeholders, the development of environments that facilitate student success, effective teaching of rules and procedures, and consistent consequences for behavior. Evaluation of such systems requires schools to collect data to assess perfo...

Although functional behavior assessment (FBA) is widely advocated as best practice in developing effective behavior intervention plans for students with challenging behaviors, there is no compelling evidence supporting the ability of school-based personnel to use the outcomes of FBA to develop effective interventions. In this study, selected staff...

Functional behavior assessment (FBA) is an integral component of a positive behavior support approach to preventing problem behavior across all students in the school. As primary prevention, FBA is a collaborative school-wide practice to predict common problems and to develop school-wide interventions. As secondary prevention, FBA involves simple a...

Although functional behavior assessment (FBA) has been widely recognized as a promising practice for providing proactive interventions with students exhibiting challenging behaviors in typical schools, questions persist as to how FBA should best be trained and used in such public settings. Debate has balanced the issue of what is practical for publ...

This article presents an example of how school time was monitored to facilitate a cost analysis of school-wide systems of positive behavior support (PBS). The article provides descriptions of how (a) PBS efforts were initiated in the school, (b) time and money were spent preparing for and implementing PBS, and (c) changes in behavior referrals and...

Under the 1997 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, schools have a legal obligation to conduct functional behavior assessments (FBAs) when developing intervention plans for students with disabilities whose behaviors lead their individualized education program teams to consider a change in educational placement, including suspension and expu...

Recent literature regarding functional behavior assessment (FBA) in general education environments has been critical of the paucity of research in such settings, given the complex and often time-consuming nature of FBA. Less complex team-based FBA processes have been suggested as a realistic alternative for general education environments. This stud...

The disciplinary regulations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments of 1997 imposed new demands on educators. These include the requirement to conduct functional behavioral assessments for students with disabilities in public school settings prior to certain disciplinary practices, and to conduct these assessments as a basis...

This article proposes a framework for expanding the traditional presentation of wraparound and FBA to (a) view wraparound and FBA as concepts that are inextricably linked at the core of each level of the proactive systemic process of PBS and (b) understand how wraparound and FBA are critical features of prevention as well as intervention for creati...

Effective school-based programming for students with behavioral difficulties continues to challenge educators. Consensus is growing that prevention and early intervention must be prioritized, agencies must collaborate, and family—school partnerships must be improved so that effective interventions are actually implemented. This article explores how...

The students with the most serious emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) often are confined to self-contained special education classrooms where they typically exhibit chronic and pervasive problems with both academic and social behavior. These stu- dents fail more often than any other group of students and are subjected to more exclusion- ary p...

This paper discusses how educators can apply positive behavioral support (PBS) to students with and without disabilities and conduct functional behavioral assessments (FBAs). It begins by describing the challenges that educators face in educating an increasingly heterogeneous population of students, including students with external and internal pro...

Without prevention strategies, schools can expect to observe behavioral difficulties in more than 20% of the school population. Using schoolwide systems of positive behavioral support, schools can decrease the number of problem behaviors by students, providing a clearer focus for intervention on the students with the greatest support needs. This ar...

FAYETTE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS nitiating schoolwide support systems is a dynamic and interac-tive process that involves all persons in the school. As with any process that involves systemic change, some degree of conflict and reluctance is inevitable. However, the efficiency of the imple-mentation process can be greatly enhanced by engaging in a set...

Reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (1997) produced new language concerned with placement and instruction of students who present challenging behaviors and for whom there is risk of disability determination. The result is an immediate need for preservice personnel preparation as well as staff and professional developm...

Positive behavior support (PBS) and functional behavioral assessment (FBA) are two significant concepts of the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. These two concepts are not new, but they are important for improving the quality of efforts to educate children and youth with disabilities. The purposes of this article a...

This digest describes the post-school outcomes of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) in education, employment, and social relationships. It also presents several school-based strategies to improve the post-school outcomes for students with EBD, including: (1) social skills training that involves both direct instruction and teach...

This report reviews existing data related to post-school outcomes for individuals with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), discusses why these data may be misleading, and describes what the special education field is doing to improve the post-school outcomes for individuals with EBD. In the first part of the paper, outcomes related to three l...

This article presents seven sequential steps to completing a functional behavioral analysis and a behavioral intervention plan for a student with emotional/behavior disorders: (1) description of the behavior; (2) refinement of the behavior; (3) data collection; (4) data analysis; (5) hypothesis generation; (6) behavior intervention plan development...

Functional behavioral assessment was mandated in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Amendments of 1997 as a behavioral evaluation for students who display behaviors that are likely to result in school exclusion. Functional behavioral assessment is not intended to be used solely as a reaction to chronic and serious behaviors. Rat...