No abstract

The randomized trial of the Making Socially Accepting Inclusive Classrooms (MOSAIC) program included intensive coaching from research staff to support teachers’ implementation of MOSAIC strategies and resulted in positive student outcomes (Mikami et al., J. Clin. Child Adolesc. Psychol. 51(6):1039–1052, 2022 ). However, these intensive procedures are costly (in time, money, and resources) and serve as barriers to intervention adoption under typical school conditions. In this study, we explored the extent to which MOSAIC-trained teachers could sustain practices under typical practice conditions (sustainment), the extent to which teachers who did not participate in the trial could adopt the practices under typical practice conditions (spread), and the extent to which strategy use in the follow-up year was associated with participation in MOSAIC-focused professional learning communities (PLCs). Participants were 30 elementary school teachers, including (a) 13 teachers who received intensive coaching on MOSAIC practices during the previous year (MOSAIC group), and (b) seven teachers who participated in the trial in the control condition, plus 10 new teachers interested in MOSAIC (new-to-MOSAIC group). We assessed MOSAIC strategy use over the school year via monthly observations and biweekly teacher self-report surveys. Observation data revealed high sustainment in the MOSAIC group, with teachers showing less than 20% decline in the use of most strategies between the two years of participation. New-to-MOSAIC teachers implemented some core MOSAIC strategies, although not to the extent as those in the MOSAIC group. Higher strategy use was modestly associated with PLC attendance. We discuss implications for encouraging sustainment and intervention spread after initial, intensive supports are withdrawn. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12310-022-09555-w.

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Many students with social, emotional, and behavioral problems receive school-based services. Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) is the one most frequently referenced systems for coordinating services. The goal of this framework is to effectively match assessment and services to the needs of individual students. In many schools this process is limited by a lack of an overall coordinating system. As a result, many students receive services for social, emotional and behavioral problems that are unlikely to be effective, are not guided by progress monitoring, and not adequately informed by current and historical data. The Beacon System is a web-based tool created to enhance the quality of service provision for students with social, emotional, and behavioral problems by supporting continuous progress monitoring, helping educators know what services are likely to be helpful for a particular student according to their age and presenting problems, and providing educators and school mental health professionals with information to help them implement both familiar and unfamiliar interventions. Additionally, the Beacon system will enhance educators’ abilities to coordinate with a student’s entire intervention team and allow for continuity as a child changes grades, teachers, or schools. Enhancing these parts of the overall process can improve educators’ efforts to achieve the goals of MTSS to provide effective interventions matched to the students’ needs. The purpose of this manuscript is to describe the iterative development process used to create Beacon and highlight specific examples of some of the methods. In addition, we will describe how feedback from stakeholders (e.g., teachers, school mental health professionals) was used to inform decisions about design. Finally, we will describe the final development steps taken prior to pilot implementation studies and our plans for additional data collection to inform continued development of Beacon. This includes the strategies being used to measure outcomes at multiple levels including assessing a variety of behaviors of the professionals in the schools as well as student outcomes. These data will inform continuous development work that will keep us moving toward our goal of enhancing the outcomes of students with social, emotional and behavioral problems.