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Classroom-wide Interventions
Effective classrooms incorporate strategies and interventions that encourage academic and social success for all students, including students with emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD), and those struggling with problem behaviors (Carta, Atwater, Schwartz, & Miller, 1990; Wallace, Anderson, Bartholomay, & Hupp, 2002). Contributing to this effort, Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS) has gained considerable attention over the past decade as an effective approach for promoting positive social and academic behaviors, while reducing problem behaviors across school settings (Coffey & Horner, 2012; Sugai & Horner, 2006; Sugai et al., 2000; Taylor-Greene et al., 1997; Todd, Horner, Sugai, & Sprague, 1999). A critical focus of PBIS is the application of classroom-wide interventions in all classrooms designed to be applied to all students (Sugai & Horner, 2006).
Research on classroom interventions has shown that student behaviors are impacted by the features within the environment (Fairbanks, Sugai, Guadino, & Lathrop, 2007; Hieneman, Dunlap, & Kincaid, 2005; Reinke, Herman, & Stormont, 2013). These features include the structure of the physical setting, types of activities, and instructional practices (Fox & Conroy, 1995). Specifically, classroom-wide interventions can be organized and conceptualized as physiological factors (e.g., noise level), context specific activities and social events (e.g., small group work, types of tasks, cooperative rather than competitive tasks), and environmental or instructional factors (e.g., teacher interactive practices, clarity of routines and procedures, management practices) occurring temporally distant, concurrently and/or in combination with challenging behaviors (Conroy & Stichter, 2003; Trus-sell, Lewis & Stichter, 2008).
Classroom-wide interventions are research-based, best practices that encourage academic participation while reducing potential problem behaviors. These interventions have been designed to support struggling students and to assist in the effort to include students with EBD in a variety of educational settings (Reinke, Herman, & Stormont, 2013). In the most basic sense, behaviors are motivated by peer/adult attention or escape from difficult tasks/circumstances (Carr & Durand, 1985; Kilgus, Fallon, & Feinberg, 2016). Instructional practices that promote academic success while meeting the attention or escape needs of students provide optimal support and opportunities for students. Two instructional practices, peer tutoring and providing choices, have been identified in the literature as supporting academic success while providing opportunities for escape and attention.
The positive effects of peer tutoring have been demonstrated across subjects such as reading...