This article discusses the progression of tutoring system innovations from informal, dyadic, and subjectively evaluated arrangements to more formally arranged configurations that emphasize training, application, and evaluation. Suggestions for future innovations, based on existing prototypes, are discussed.

This chapter seeks to provide context for teachers' overreliance on punitive discipline practices and how these practices contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline. If preservice teachers course content can be enhanced, it may help teachers learn about their own bias, more proactive responses to challenging behavior, trauma and its manifestations, and trauma-informed alternatives to challenging behavior. These changes may lead to classrooms that are more trauma-sensitive and culturally relevant, which will allow teachers to disrupt punitive discipline systems that are contributing to the school-to-prison pipeline. This chapter provides an overview of relevant literature and suggestions for ways that teacher training programs can prepare teachers to be more trauma-sensitive. Topics include positive behavioral interventions and supports, social-emotional learning, and trauma-informed approaches. Specific classroom practices will be described.

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Deficit thinking by educators is a barrier to student success. To effectively meet the needs of all students, future teachers need to be able to identify and challenge deficit thinking when they encounter it. Educator preparation programs are well positioned to assist with the rejection of deficit thinking in favor of strengths-based approaches in the classroom through intentionally designed courses and required field experiences. This chapter explores deficit thinking in special education, highlights components of teacher training that have been demonstrated to address issues of equity and combat deficit thinking, and shares one education department's efforts to ensure deficit thinking is adequately addressed in their coursework and fieldwork. Other educator preparation programs may benefit from the exploration of inclusive and equity-focused program components, as well as the auditing process conducted by this education department.

Peer-mediated academic interventions (PMAIs) have a robust evidence base that support their use in classrooms to improve a variety of academic behaviors. In this chapter, we define PMAIs, discuss strengths and challenges of using these interventions in classrooms with diverse groups of learners, and provide a detailed review of the literature to support each of four highlighted PMAIs: peer tutoring, Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies, cooperative learning, and peer-mediated writing interventions. This chapter also introduces the practical chapters in this section, which cover each of the four highlighted PMAIs.