Stephen W. Smith's research while affiliated with University of Florida and other places
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Publications (78)
Education researchers, policy makers, and practitioners have emphasized the role social-emotional learning and self-regulation play in children’s adjustment and connection to school, particularly as they transition from pre-school to kindergarten and the primary grades. A pretest–posttest cluster-randomized efficacy trial of the Social-Emotional Le...
Executive function (EF), a set of neurocognitive processes, is central to students’ emotional and behavioral well-being. Despite students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) being at risk for negative long-term outcomes, there is a paucity of EF research with students at risk for EBD in early elementary school, an important identification...
Executive function (EF), a set of neurocognitive processes, is central to students’ emotional and behavioral well-being. Despite students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) being at risk for negative long-term outcomes, there is a paucity of EF research with students at risk for EBD in early elementary school, an important identification...
Researchers have found that verbal aggression (VA) is the most frequent form of aggression reported in schools across
all grade levels. There are numerous harmful outcomes for VA perpetrators, victims, and witnesses including depression,
anxiety, decreased academic performance, and low sense of school belonging. Moreover, VA is known to occasion ph...
Early identification of executive dysfunction and timely school-based intervention efforts are critical for students at risk for problematic behaviors during early elementary school. The original Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF) was designed to measure real-world behavioral manifestations of executive functioning, neurocog...
Verbal aggression (VA) is the most prevalent form of aggression perpetrated, experienced, and witnessed by students with victims experiencing a variety of adverse outcomes. Furthermore, VA is known to contribute to physical aggression, especially for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Despite the high prevalence, researchers suggest...
Researchers have shown that children's social-emotional growth is inextricably connected to academic learning. We developed the Social-Emotional Learning Foundations (SELF) intervention, a Grade K-1 curriculum merging social-emotional learning (SEL) and literacy instruction, to promote language supported self-regulation, specifically for primary gr...
Working conditions may be an important lever to support special educators’ reading instruction for students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). Thus, we explored how working conditions relate to the quality of special educators’ reading instruction in upper elementary, self-contained classes for students with EBD. Using mixed methods to...
An inability to successfully regulate anger has been linked to adverse outcomes for students, including psychological problems and special education placement due to significant emotional and behavioral difficulties. Early identification, therefore, is critical to provide timely intervention for students before anger-related problems escalate. The...
Students who exhibit emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) typically have high frequencies of disruptive and noncompliant behavior including physical and verbal aggression (VA). Physical aggression attracts great concern from school professionals yet VA is often overlooked, despite being a highly pervasive and harmful social act. We surveyed 279...
Despite school‐based services, adolescents with maladaptive behavior experience negative outcomes, highlighting the need for insight into factors that contribute to and escalate behavior problems during middle school—a high‐risk period. We examined how perceived school stress, stress regulation (engagement/disengagement coping, involuntary response...
To address the needs of students at risk for significant behavior problems, educators need efficient, effective, and feasible preventive classroom interventions that increase students’ ability to regulate their own behavior. Tools for Getting Along is a universally delivered cognitive-behavioral curriculum designed to address early emotional and be...
Overt physical aggression in schools gains the most attention from educational professionals, yet researchers find that verbal aggression (VA) delivered directly is the most prevalent form. Perpetrators who engage in VA can experience a host of negative long-term outcomes and victims often experience anxiety, depression, and even suicide ideation....
The effective use of evidence-based practices in educational settings is an ongoing concern, and there is growing consensus that desired outcomes are achieved only when programs are implemented thoughtfully and thoroughly. To encourage the integration of research findings into interventions that are feasible and usable within authentic settings, re...
Using a pre–post randomized controlled trial, the purpose of this study was to determine whether a social problem-solving curriculum, Take CHARGE!, based on a cognitive-behavioral approach, could improve students’ knowledge of problem-solving skills, as well as self-report of social behaviors for 92 middle school students with emotional and behavio...
Verbal aggression (VA) is among the most prevalent forms of problem behavior in schools with detrimental effects for both perpetrators and victims, yet little is known about VA among students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). Accordingly, we surveyed 279 teachers of students with behavioral disorders to examine the prevalence, frequenc...
Aggression in children and adolescents is problematic because it places them at risk for school failure, peer rejection, and future incarceration. In this chapter, we provide an overview of interventions that include an individual treatment component for aggressive children and adolescents and address various risk factors related to aggressive beha...
Cognitive-behavioral interventions (CBIs) are effective in decreasing externalizing behavior in school-aged children. To ensure that CBIs meet the needs of a diverse student population, it is important to examine whether intervention effectiveness is influenced by characteristics common to students identified with problem behaviors. In this study,...
Cognitive-behavioral interventions (CBIs) are effective in decreasing externalizing behavior in school-aged children. To ensure that CBIs meet the needs of a diverse student population, it is important to examine whether intervention effectiveness is influenced by characteristics common to students identified with problem behaviors. In this study,...
Maladaptive adolescent behavior patterns often create escalating conflict with adults and peers, leading to poor long-term social trajectories. To address this, school-based behavior management often consists of contingent reinforcement for appropriate behavior, behavior reduction procedures, and placement in self-contained or alternative settings....
Students with significant behavioral and social problems experience some of the poorest outcomes in school and beyond. It is imperative, therefore, that educational researchers and school-based professionals address the needs of students who exhibit maladaptive behavior to alter their poor outcome trajectory. Social problem-solving (SPS) instructio...
Social-emotional learning curricula to prevent student problematic behaviors should play a prominent role in public school instruction. While social-emotional curricula have been shown to be effective, there are few replication studies that substantiate their capacity to improve outcomes for students who exhibit problem behaviors. Thus, we conducte...
Violence prevention programs are commonplace in today’s schools though reviews of the literature reveal mixed empirical findings on their effectiveness. Often, these programs include a variety of components such as social skills training, student mentoring, and activities designed to build a sense of school community that have not been tested for i...
Efficient and effective social-emotional learning programs increase the likelihood of success in school for all students, and particularly for those who may develop emotional or behavior problems. In this study, we followed a sub-sample of students 1 year after their participation in a randomized controlled trial of the effects of the Tools for Get...
Engagement in aggressive behavior has been associated with many negative outcomes for children including academic failure, social maladjustment, peer rejection, and lifelong destructive and criminal behavior. Cognitive-behavioral interventions (CBIs), which use behavioral principles, behavior therapy, and cognitive mediation through self-talk, are...
Introduction: Student problem behavior can have a negative effect on the overall school environment. Among the possible causes of problem behaviors are cognitive processing deficits and distortions that can be addressed by school personnel through the use of cognitive behavioral interventions (CBI). In recent years, CBI research has moved from the...
Childhood aggression represents a major public health concern, wherein developmental patterns of many aggressive forms yield future instances of delinquency, substance abuse, and school dropout. Recent interest in the relation of executive function (EF) processes and childhood aggression has helped to distinguish dissociable cognitive bases for som...
The aim of the current study was to examine mean-group differences on behavior rating scales and variables that may predict such differences. Sixty-five teachers completed the Clinical Assessment of Behavior–Teacher Form (CAB-T) for a sample of 982 students. Four outcome variables from the CAB-T were assessed. Hierarchical linear modeling was used...
Social demands and concomitant decreases in levels of social & emotional support during adolescent’s transition to middle school necessitate explicit intervention to increase the capacity for flexible, appropriate self-regulation in social situations. There is growing neurocognitive evidence for the link between the development of self-regulation a...
Researchers have demonstrated that cognitive-behavioral intervention strategies - such as social problem solving - provided in school settings can help ameliorate the developmental risk for emotional and behavioral difficulties. In this study, we report the results of a randomized controlled trial of Tools for Getting Along (TFGA), a social problem...
Educating students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) continues to be a challenge for many general and special education professionals. Students with EBD can exhibit behaviors such as chronic classroom disruption, aggression, and general maladaptive behavior toward peers and adults. Some students exhibit depression, obsessive/compulsive...
Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) who display aggression necessitate effective interventions for reducing highly disruptive behavior, while keeping learning environments safe and secure for all students and staff. In this chapter, we describe the merits of cognitive-behavioral interventions (CBIs) in school settings to reduce s...
Deficits in executive function (self-regulatory mechanisms) have been linked with many childhood disorders including attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, and conduct disorder. Executive functioning is typically assessed by individually administering performance-based measures in a clinical setting. However, per...
School violence and weapons at school are a major concern for community members, school administrators, and policy makers. This research examines both student-level and school-level variables that predict middle school students’ willingness to report a weapon at school under several reporting conditions. Results substantiate previous analyses of th...
Surveys have been the primary vehicle for identifying variables associated with special education teacher attrition. Survey research, however, does not reveal the contextual variables influencing decisions to stay in or leave the classroom. We explored variables related to teacher attrition by qualitative interviews with 14 current and 10 former sp...
The experiences that beginning special education teachers encounter moving from the pre-service environment into the first year of classroom teaching put them in a uniquely tenuous position that could lead to leaving the classroom after only a few years of teaching. District- and school-level administrators can influence the retention rates of begi...
We examined the alterations in EF following a class-wide cognitive behavioral intervention intended to promote the use of social problem solving among 4th and 5th grade students. Results indicate that teacher ratings of specific EF skills (e.g., inhibition, planning, emotional control) as well as ratings for an overall EF composite were significant...
In intervention research, treatment fidelity is defined as the strategies that monitor and enhance the accuracy and consistency of an intervention to ensure it is implemented as planned and that each component is delivered in a comparable manner to all study participants over time. Reviews of the literature in special education and other discipline...
Classroom teachers need effective, efficient strategies to prevent and/or ameliorate destructive student behaviors and increase socially appropriate ones. During the past two decades, researchers have found that cognitive strategies can decrease student disruption/aggression and strengthen pro-social behavior. Following preliminary pilot work, we c...
Education professionals consistently rank disruptive/aggressive student behavior as persistent and troubling, reporting various types of maladaptive behaviors ranging from talking out in class to assault. Researchers suggest that childhood aggression accounts for a high proportion of the referrals to special education for emotional and behavioral d...
One goal of prevention research in the field of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD) is to improve social and academic outcomes for students with the highest risk behavioral profiles before they are identified for special education programming. Teaching students with EBD alongside typically functioning peers can minimize stigmatization, facilit...
School success may be minimal for students who have difficulties building social relationships and ultimately fail at developing social competence. As a result, social skills training is often provided to increase prosocial interaction. Despite evidence of the effectiveness of teaching appropriate social functioning, there is concern about generali...
For most elementary teachers, maintaining classroom discipline is a daily concern, one that can be rewarding and at the same time a source of frustration. The inclusion of students with emotional or behavioral disorders and other students with behavioral problems can strain even the most competent classroom teachers and may add to the already incre...
Many professional educators are implementing school-based prevention focused on conflict resolution (CR) and peer mediation (PM). The authors conducted research on CR-PM in 3 middle schools. Specifically, they surveyed teachers and students, tracked disciplinary incidents across school years, collected mediation data, and compared mediators with a...
Cognitive-behavioral interventions (CBI), used to teach cognitive problem-solving skills, can remediate social deficits in youths who react inappropriately to feelings of anger with aggression or social withdrawal. This study was intended to provide a clearer understanding of CBI effects by using the Anger Control Curriculum on responses to anger b...
This article discusses the role of secondary school teachers in developing and implementing effective transition plans for students with severe disabilities. Required components of transition plans are described and guidelines are presented for developing individual transition programs. Educators are urged to promote employment skills and self-dete...
Students with learning disabilities in algebra classes face many difficulties. Among them are an inability to apply algorithmic knowledge to novel problems, poor arithmetic skills, and difficulty with the abstract content associated with higher-level mathematics. With this in mind, we explore some of the research on the algebra performance of stude...
Although education professionals frequently use social skills training with students who exhibit significant behavioral problems, researchers continue to question its efficacy and generaliz-ability. Because social skill deficits are predictive of adult adjustment problems, robust and omnibus interventions to remediate social deficits in children an...
Girls constitute half the enrollment in gifted programs in the United States but are underrepresented in high-paying, high-status occupations. The influences of peers, family, and school environment have been identified as the salient external factors affecting gifted girls' career choices. Teachers are in the unique position to observe these influ...
Effective school-wide responses to disruptive, aggressive, and violent student behaviors are critical to ensuring teacher and student safety and to increasing constructive approaches to conflict. As such, many educators are implementing school-based prevention programs focused on conflict resolution and peer mediation (CR/PM). In this article, we s...
Cognitive behavior modification (CBM) has been used for the past 25 years to mitigate maladaptive behaviors through the use of covert self-statements. Yet few reviewers have examined the use of CBM in school settings to reduce hyperactive–impulsive and aggressive behaviors in children and youth. This meta-analysis examined the outcomes of 23 studie...
We randomly surveyed 1,576 Florida special education teachers to examine factors that contribute to their propensity to leave or stay in the special education classroom or transfer to a new school. The variables identified, based on extensive review of the literature, included background, classroom, school district, and personal factors. We tracked...
Students with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) present significant academic and behavior management challenges for educators. As such, educators are constantly seeking interventions that are effective in assisting students with EBD to manage their own behavior and achieve success in school. One behavioral management approach that educators f...
Teachers make their decision to leave the special education classroom for a variety of reasons. Comprehensive reviews of the teacher attrition literature suggest that researchers have been unable to clearly articulate why special education teachers leave the classroom. Furthermore, researchers know little about the effect of teacher attrition on in...
Special Issue Editors' Comments: We would like to thank our editors, Michael H. Epstein and Doug Cullinan, for making this special series on the National Agenda for Achieving Better Results for Children and Youth with Serious Emotional Disturbance possible. It is their leadership that makes it possible to exchange much needed information about the...
Computer-assisted Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) offer the promise of enhancing special education practice. For instance, such technology could enhance the IEPs participatory process by empowering parents and students, ease the bureaucratic demands of timely standardized documents, improve upon the overall quality of the document, and fac...
Examines the current system of providing and documenting special education by analyzing the Individualized Education Program through a number of its implicit and often unquestioned assumptions. Explores flaws in the current system and makes recommendations for major changes in policy implementation, teacher education, and school organizations. (PB)
Inappropriate social behaviors of elementary-aged students may negatively affect their opportunity to be successful in school and contribute to adjustment problems as adolescents and adults. Specifically, anger and aggression in children have accounted for a high number of children being referred to special education programs. A multiple baseline d...
Provides guidance in the development and implementation of quality individualized education programs (IEPs) for children and youth with autism. Areas discussed are (1) product and process functions of IEPs, (2) best practices of IEP development and implementation, (3) the need for ecological assessments, and (4) considerations for using computer so...
Discusses the development of level systems and examines assumptions underlying their concepts and components. It is argued that the analysis of the assumptions underlying level systems is crucial to uncovering what professionals can do in the classroom to improve student behavior and to increase professional discourse to advance, redesign, or reinv...
Teacher attrition is one of the foremost problems facing special education in the next decade. Little information exists, however, that describes the variables that affect teacher attrition and their interrelationships. Thus, we present a conceptual model for studying teacher attrition and retention. The conceptual model incorporates historical, en...
Conducting a dissertation study is considered by many faculty advisers and their students as a crucial step in the completion of a doctoral program. The challenging nature of completing the dissertation is illustrated by the numbers of persons who leave their doctoral program with “all but dissertation” status. Despite the demands of conducting dis...
Teacher attrition will be the foremost issue confronting professionals in special education during the next decade. Several studies indicate that special educators are at greater risk to leave teaching than general educators. Combined with existing teacher shortages, special education teacher attrition raises serious questions about public educatio...
Evaluated were 214 Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) of students (Grades 1–12) with behavioral disorders assigned to public school resource, self-contained, and interrelated (i.e., cross-categorical) and residential/institutional special education programs. Federal mandate compliance, number of annual goals, completed short-term objectives,...
Citations
... Yet, these skills exist on a continuum. More recently, Cumming, Poling, Qiu, et al. (2023) conducted a latent profile analysis with a sample of kindergarteners and first graders at risk for EBD (n = 1,154) and found support for a three-profile solution of mildly, moderately, and clinically at-risk EF profiles (i.e., demonstrating increasing levels of EF difficulty). These profiles predicted problematic behaviors, social competence, and language, and students in the moderately and clinically at-risk EF profiles exhibited considerable difficulties in all three areas. ...
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... BRIEF2 is widely used worldwide in clinical, psychoeducational, and research settings (Jiménez and Lucas-Molina, 2019;Robertson et al., 2020;Cumming et al., 2023) and has been successfully validated in several languages (Muñoz and Filippetti, 2021;Liu et al., 2022;Parhoon et al., 2022;Moura et al., 2023). Many of the existing studies have mainly been conducted on samples from North America (Jacobson et al., 2020) and Europe. ...
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... Despite the high prevalence, researchers suggest that school personnel may not understand the harmful nature of verbal aggression. (Worth et al., 2021). ...
... Educators, counselors, and psychologists are increasingly focusing their instruction on both literacy and social-emotional skills, particularly in supporting elementary school children's academic development Daunic et al., 2013Daunic et al., , 2021. Recognizing the gaps in learning and needs for socialemotional support that have been exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, children would benefit from holistic learning opportunities that place social-emotional development at the center of instructional practices (Meherali et al., 2021). ...
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... With all the challenges experienced by the reading teachers handling LSENs, teacherparticipants have shared the help of using whatever creative strategies in teaching reading towards the said learners. This was supported by the results of the study done by Mathews et al. [38], wherein results and finding revealed that learners with EBD need highly effective and creative reading instructions. These effective reading instructions are believed to be activities which they are highly engaged and focused. ...
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... In its final form, the measure consists of (32) items answered with a 4-point scale that takes the following weights: 1 = never, 2 = sometimes, 3 = often, and 4 = always in the positive statements. For the opposite statements, grades are reversed, and they are those with numbers (1,2,3,4,5,7,9,10,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,27,28,30). The respondents' scores ranged on the scale (32-128). ...
... Восприятие педагогами вербальной агрессии учащихся связано со спецификой контингента, с которым работает педагог (учащиеся с эмоционально-поведенческими нарушениями и нормативные учащиеся), а также с дополнительной сертификацией в вопросах профилактики агрессии [28]. ...
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... Due to puberty-driven physiological and neural changes, early adolescence is also a time of increased sensitivity to stress (Eiland & Romeo, 2013;Romeo, 2013). Thus, studies have found higher perceived stress levels during adolescence were associated with emotional and behavioral problems, poor academic performance, and lower life satisfaction (Burger & Samuel, 2017;Cumming et al., 2019;Goldstein et al., 2015;Sontag et al., 2011). However, many of these studies used a cross-sectional design that cannot establish a temporal relationship between perceived stress and psychosocial functioning. ...
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... Li et al., through the promotion of quality education dance in Hengshui primary schools, believe that quality education dance has a great significance to the cultivation of quality-oriented education [7]. In the early stage, the course was not effectively promoted due to the lack of evaluation mechanism, but after the relevant research gradually deepened the artificial intelligence intervention technology and analysis technology of AHRB, the quality education dance class combined with the artificial intelligence sports analysis function was used to obtain the positive intervention effect on AHRB students [8,9]. At the same time, in view of the intervention effect of relevant research on autism and depression of quality-oriented education dance, this study delves into its intervention effect on AHRB [10]. ...
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... Few concrete tools for dealing with VAB are discussed in educational research. A recent literature review on verbal aggression in schools pointed out that interventions focusing on reducing VAB, or empirical studies mapping self-reported reaction strategies to VAB are scarce to non-existent [34]. However, substantial research into aggression in other socio-economic areas resulted in mechanisms guiding practice [58]. ...
