Date of Award

Fall 2018

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

School

Psychology

Committee Chair

Brad A. Dufrene

Committee Chair School

Psychology

Committee Member 2

Daniel Tingstrom

Committee Member 2 School

Psychology

Committee Member 3

Keith Radley

Committee Member 3 School

Psychology

Committee Member 4

Evan H. Dart

Committee Member 4 School

Psychology

Abstract

Many teachers are ill prepared in behavior management and literature has demonstrated the relationship between poor classroom management and academic outcomes. Common strategies to address teachers’ skill deficits in classroom management include didactic training and school-based consultation. Literature suggests that traditional didactic training can immediately increase knowledge acquisition, and school-based consultation is used to respond to ongoing academic and behavioral outcomes. However, both of these methods commonly fail to result in implementation fidelity and long-term maintenance of skill utilization. Research in the education field has demonstrated large to very large effect sizes for systems such as Response to Intervention (RtI) in improving academic and behavioral outcomes of students. These instruction models have inspired a growing body of literature applying tiered instruction to teacher training, with preliminary results supporting tiered approaches to consultation.

The purpose of this study was to extend the emergent literature of tiered approaches to consultation by providing teacher training on a foundational classroom management strategy: Behavior Specific Praise (BSP). A multiple baseline design across four high school teachers and classroom dyads was used, with results overall demonstrating that not all teacher participants required the same level of training in order to improve their rates of BSP to 0.5 BSP/minute. In this study, three out of four teachers benefited from the most intensive level of training (i.e., Tier 3), whereas only one teacher participant required a lesser intensive level of training (i.e., Tier 2). Results show variability in classroom behavior that was sometimes consistent with issues of delivering BSP at the prescribed rate. In regards maintenance, all teacher participants demonstrated a decrease in their rate of BSP; however, levels of reprimands for all teachers decreased below baseline levels. Additionally, all teachers rated this tiered consultation approach as socially valid. This dissertation discusses these results in light of visual analysis as well as limitations and directions for future research.

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