The Classroom Password: A Class-Wide Intervention to Increase Academic Engagement

Abstract

The present study investigated the effectiveness of a novel class-wide intervention, the Classroom Password, for increasing the academic engaged behavior of middle school students. The effectiveness of an independent group contingency was evaluated using a concurrent multiple baseline design across three seventh-and eighth-grade classrooms. Results indicated that the intervention was effective across all three classrooms in increasing students' academic engagement, or on-task behavior, as evidenced by visual analysis and moderate to large effect sizes. Decreases in disruptive behavior were also observed across all three classrooms. Off-task behavior was not substantially affected in any of the three classrooms. The intervention received mixed ratings by the classroom teachers regarding its social validity. Results of the present study suggest that the Classroom Password may be an effective class-wide intervention for increasing the academically engaged behavior and decreasing the disruptive behavior of middle school students during instructional time. C 2016

The Accuracy of Peer Comparison Observations: A Simulated Analysis

“…To analyze the accuracy of each method, a large sample of student behavior was required. Previous studies examining the accuracy of observational methods have used simulations of student behavior for this purpose (e.g., Dart, Radley, Briesch et al, 2016; Rapp et al, 2008). Thus, we used a similar methodology in this study.…”

“…Markov chains are stochastic processes in which the probability of a future event is dependent only upon the previously observed state (Roberts, 1996). This type of simulation allows for naturalistic runs of behavior states, an advantage over previous models of simulation in which states were randomly determined within each observational interval (e.g., Dart, Radley, Briesch et al, 2016)—a procedure likely to result in rapid switching between states.…”

“…When three or five random peers served as comparisons, peers were observed in the same order, repeatedly, throughout the duration of the observation (e.g., Peer 1, Peer 2, Peer 3, Peer 1, Peer 2, Peer 3). For schemes in which all peers in the classroom were sampled (i.e., whole class), an Individual-Fixed method of observation was utilized (e.g., Briesch et al, 2015; Dart et al, 2016). Using an Individual-Fixed method, all peers in the classroom were placed in a randomized order.…”

“…The utility of SDO is broad, allowing school personnel to assess the behavior of a single student (e.g., Spanjers et al, 2008), a group of students (e.g., Stahmer et al, 2016), or an entire classroom of students (e.g., Dart, Radley, Battaglia, et al, 2016) for a variety of purposes. These data can then be used to evaluate the effectiveness of individualized or class-wide behavior interventions or determine the need for additional behavioral support.…”

A Comparison of Two Procedures for Assessing Preference in a Classroom Setting

“…not explicitly required by interventions employing class-wide group contingencies, teachers often select a single stimulus or activity that will be used as reinforcement (e.g., Dart et al, 2016) or randomly select an item from a list of stimuli (e.g., Hawkins, Haydon, Denune, Larkin, & Fite, 2015). The drawback to this method of stimulus selection is that it does not consider student preference.…”