Best Practices to Support Student Behavior

The No Child Left Behind Act mandates that teachers employ evidence-based practices (EBPs) in the classroom in order to improve student performance. For students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) to be successful, particularly in inclusive settings, the most salient practices would probably be those promoting classroom organization and sound behavior management. However, data suggest that many teachers feel that they are insufficiently prepared to handle challenging behaviors (Baker, 2005; Billingsley, Fall, & Williams, 2006; Wagner et al., 2006). While disciplines such as psychology and medicine have attempted to identify effective practices from scientific evidence (Cook, Tankersley, & Landrum, 2009), the field of special education is arguably more challenging. The complexities of special education and its research base include such factors as the often extreme variability of participants in research investigations, the overrepresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse individuals in special education, and the low prevalence of some disability types, to name only a few. All of these are barriers to setting specific evaluation criteria or benchmarks that can be used broadly to identify evidence- based practices (Odom et al., 2005). Despite these challenges, a number of processes have been undertaken to identify evidence-based practices in the field of special education in order to support teachers and their students in the classroom.

Issue: 
Beyond Behavior, 20 (2)
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