Early Childhood

This overview describe Multitiered system of support (MTSS) as a conceptual framework for organizing service delivery to students. 

The purpose of this paper is to describe methodological issues related to the independent variable in early intervention research. Three standards related to the independent variable are proposed:

Examined the effect of social skills intervention on the frequency of positive peer interaction (PI) in 4 moderately hearing-impaired preschool children (aged 5.5 yrs to 5.10 yrs).

Differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) schedules can be used to decrease, but not eliminate, excessive bids for teacher attention in a classroom. There are two primary methods of implementing a DRL: full session and spaced responding.

This paper outline the rationale, critical dimensions, and techniques for using peer micronorms and discuss technical adequacy considerations.

Six issues presented in this presentation are (1) The definitional issue (2) The effectiveness issue (3) The domain issue (4) The measurement issue (5) The professional development issue (6) The system issue

The Bridging the Word Gap Research Network conducted a review of literature to identify effective interventions to facilitate the communication development of young children in hopes of identifying ways to reduce the well-documented word gap among children associated with socio-economic class. As part of this effort, we focused on the ways in which caregivers (teachers, parents, and others) were taught to implement evidence-based practices for facilitating language learning and use.

This study is a meta-analysis of the research on the impact of comprehensive school reform (CSR) on student achievement. The research summarizes the specific effects of 29 widely implemented models.

The goal of this paper is to estimate the extent to which there is differential attrition based on teachers' value-added to student achievement.

In this article, multiple-baseline across participants designs were used to evaluate the impact of a precision teaching (PT) program, within a Tier 2 Response to Intervention framework, targeting fluency in foundational reading skills with at risk kindergarten readers. From the outcomes of the multilevel model, PT can be considered as a promising Tier 2 intervention to increase reading fluency with individuals who are at risk of reading failure.

This paper summarizes the results of a retrospective review of generalization in the context of social skills research with preschool children.

The oral reading of 65 first-graders experiencing difficulties in beginning reading was observed during primary reading instructional time. Findings indicate most instruction for struggling readers was not aligned with recent research on preventing reading difficulties, and even struggling readers receiving reading instruction aligned with best practices are making minimal progress. 

Showcasing evidence-based models for schoolwide prevention of reading and behavior problems, this book is highly informative, practical, and grounded in research.

This clinically wise and pragmatic book presents a systematic approach for treating any form of childhood anxiety using proven exposure-based techniques.

At this manual level of analysis, practitioners may choose from a variety of specific treatment programs that have demonstrated their efficacy in research trials.

In this 26th volume of Advances in Learning and Behavioral Disabilities we address one of the most important educational reforms of recent years evidence-based practices (EBPs).

Two studies were conducted with children who displayed behavior problems to evaluate the effects of task preference, task demands, and adult attention on child behavior.

The present interpretation of construct validity is not “official” and deals with some areas where the Committee would probably not be unanimous. The present writers are solely responsible for this attempt to explain the concept and elaborate its implications.

This study compared the effects of two oral reading feedback strategies in improving the reading comprehension of eight school-age children with low reading ability. Participants were assigned to one of two intervention groups matched on age, grade, gender, and general reading performance.

Analysis of the problems, theory, and design of sampling techniques for social scientists, industrial managers, and others who find statistics increasingly important in their work. Only college algebra assumed. Illustrated with dozens of actual large-scale surveys in government and industry. "The 'bible' of sampling statisticians."

This study uses data collected in the intervention classrooms of Head Start REDI (Research- based, Developmentally Informed), a randomized clinical trial testing the efficacy of a comprehensive preschool curriculum targeting children’s social-emotional competence, language, and emergent literacy skills delivered by teachers who received weekly coaching support.

The National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ) review examines teacher preparation program progress in adopting the necessary components of evidence-based reading instruction. The report continues the effort of two previous reports offering educators a look at trends on preparation program progress on providing this essential training.

The authors concluded that early intensive behavioral intervention was associated with large to moderate improvements in IQ (intelligence quotient) and adaptive behavior in children with autism compared to no intervention or eclectic treatment.

This paper identified and discussed some of the more pressing challenges and associated ethical dilemmas of implementing EBP in social work and strategies to manage them, in the hopes of affirming that the process of EBP is both feasible and practicable.

The purpose of this Brief is to define the variables a state or large district leadership team may wish to consider as they determine if they are “ready” to invest in the scaling-up of innovation in education.

The failure of better science to readily produce better services has led to increasing interest in the science and practice of implementation. The results of recent reviews of implementation literature and best practices are summarized in this article.

CASL's general goal is to identify instructional practices that accelerate the learning of K-3 children with disabilities. A specific goal is to identify and understand the nature of nonresponsiveness to generally effective instruction. 

In this article, we explain important features of RTI, why it has been promoted as a substitute for IQ-achievement discrepancy, and what remains to be understood before it may be seen as a valid means of LD identification.

Using data from two academic cohorts, the kindergarten classes of 1998 and 2010, this study examines the relationship between children’s socioeconomic status (SES) and their cognitive and noncognitive skills when starting school.

The first portion of this article describes the development and validation of a classroom observation measure. The goal of the measure was to assess the quality of reading instruction provided to first-grade English learners.

This paper presents a systematic review of the literature that assessed the effectiveness of frequency building and precision teaching with school-aged children. The authors evaluated studies in accordance with the What Works Clearinghouse standards and the council for exceptional children standards for evidence-based practices in special education.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of three active responding techniques (i.e., hand raising, choral responding, the response card) on student participation and ontask behavior in preschool children with attending problems. 

This executive summary discusses the definition of learning disabilities (LD) and how students are identified as having a learning disability.

This paper discusses the definition of learning disabilities (LD) and how students are identified as having a learning disability.

The purpose of this chapter is to present the evolution of the response to intervention (RTI) concept and discuss how that concept can be and is being used to provide more effective services to children and youth with both academic and social/behavioral difficulties

This principal's guide to implementing Response to Intervention (RTI) for elementary and middle school reading emphasizes the critical role administrators play in ensuring RTI success in their schools. The author makes recommendations for putting the RTI process in motion and helps school leaders:

This report and podcast examines the scientific basis for how to teach reading to children. This investigation reveals how children learn to read, emphasizing the five critical components of reading instruction. 

This book gives researchers and professionals the means to break this frustrating cycle, crafted by authors who have not only been there and done that, but can explain in-depth how to replicate the method

Children's behavior problems pose challenges to families, schools, and society. The research literature argues that early detection/intervention is the most powerful course of action in ameliorating these problems in children at risk of emotional/behavioral disorders.

The authors review the status, strength, and quality of evidence-based practice in child and adolescent mental health services.

Conducted a meta-analysis of 58 studies (1960–1984) on the early prediction of learning problems that reported correlations between measures administered in kindergarten or 1st-grade and reading achievement later in elementary school.

This report presents final 1999 data on U.S. deaths and death rates according to demographic and medical characteristics. Trends and patterns in general mortality, life expectancy, and infant and maternal mortality are also described.

Evidence-based psychosocial interventions and respective outcome studies, published from 1990 to 2012, were identified through a multi-phase search process, involving the review of four major clearinghouse websites and relevant electronic databases. To be included, effectiveness had to have been previously established through a comparison group design regardless of the setting, and interventions tested subsequently with youth in RCS.

This study was designed to draw on clinical practice as a way of identifying priority areas for child and adolescent psychotherapy research.

Introduced in the early 1970s, repeated reading has a history of helping students build oral reading fluency spanning almost 40 years. Participants in original repeated reading studies had to meet specific reading rates (i.e., fluency criteria) before considering a passage complete.

To measure retention of oral reading fluency, three students attending a learning support classroom used a repeating reading strategy with two passages. Each student read one passage to a high performance standard and the other passage to a lower performance standard. Results show it took the students more practice to reach the higher performance standard in regards to both calendar days and practice trials.

Headsprout Reading Basics is a highly effective, balanced, and phonics-based reading program that teaches the skills and strategies necessary to sound out as well as read words. Phonemic awareness instruction is integrated throughout many of the Headsprout Reading Basics' teaching routines.

This study investigated the effectiveness of a differential reinforcement of alternative
behavior procedure in decreasing disruptive behavior while simultaneously increasing the
appropriate behavior of four children of typical development between the ages of 4 and 6 in
center-based classrooms. We began with brief functional analyses for each child.

A survey of eighteen reports of evaluations at close, and seventeen at follow-up, was compared with similar evaluations of untreated children. Two-thirds of the evaluations at close, and three-quarters at follow-up, showed improvement. 

Evidence concerning the appropriateness of defector control groups is conflicting, but it is still probable that such a group yields a suitable baseline for the evaluation of psychotherapy. 

Sixteenth census of United States: 1940; Vital statistics rates in the United States, 1940-1960

This study evaluated the effects of a fluency-based reading program with 15 second and third grade students and 15 matched controls. Gains in oral reading fluency on untrained CBM probes were evaluated using a matched-pairs group-comparison design, whereas immediate and two-day retention gains in oral reading fluency on trained passages were evaluated using an adapted changing criterion design.

Leadership: The Key Concepts is an indispensable and authoritative guide to the most crucial ideas, concepts and debates surrounding the study and exercise of leadership

This paper presents two studies of factors affecting developmental outcomes of young children exposed prenatally to drugs and alcohol.

This study provides descriptive data on the rates of office discipline referrals and beginning reading skills for students in grades K—3 for one school district that is implementing a three-tier prevention model for both reading and behavior support. 

In this article, the authors review the research on curriculum-based measurement (CBM) in reading published since the time of Marston’s 1989 review

The purpose of this study was to examine the strength of scientific evidence from single-subject research underlying the Division of Early Childhood (DEC) Recommended Practices.

We sought to identify, examine, and summarize empirical literature focused on early childhood behavior interventions examined using a single case research designs (SCD) and published between 2001 and 2018. The findings of the current review suggest: promoting implementation fidelity through implementation support to improve social validity outcomes, providing guidelines for timing and frequency of social validity assessment, and development of social validity assessment tools designed to assess each of the social validity dimensions.

The purpose of the current investigation was to assess the relationship between the integrity with which social skills interventions were implemented in early childhood special education classrooms and 3 factors: teacher ratings of intervention acceptability, consultative support for implementation, and individual child outcomes.

The quality of the teacher workforce is especially important in the early grades, when teachers bear an extraordinary responsibility, building a solid foundation for students in both the knowledge and skills they will need to succeed in later grades, as well as in their future lives. The past year and a half has laid bare the tremendous challenges teachers face and the essential role they play in supporting students. As the pandemic abates and we reckon with the damage it wrought, we must acknowledge that recovery places unprecedented demands on our education system and its teachers.

Reading is a crucial skill for students to develop, not only as they enter school but also as they continue throughout K-12 education. Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is one means of providing supplemental support for students to build the foundational key areas of reading—so they can use reading to learn in later schooling years.

In an experimental assessment of a choral responding procedure for increasing children's response to teacher commands, decreased levels of off-task behavior, as well as increased levels of correct responding, resulted from the procedures for three handicapped preschool children during large group instruction.

This study examined the effects of a self-evaluation treatment package on the independent work skills of preschool children with disabilities. 

For more than 10 years, the Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions has published, among other types of articles, behavioral intervention outcome studies related to positive behavior support. Operationally defining interventions is important to facilitating replication studies and adoption of intervention in applied settings.

The psychology classic—a detailed study of scientific theories of human nature and the possible ways in which human behavior can be predicted and controlled. 

This article presents a systematic review of research on the achievement outcomes of all
types of approaches to teaching science in elementary schools. Study inclusion criteria
included use of randomized or matched control groups, a study duration of at least 4 weeks,
and use of achievement measures independent of the experimental treatment.

Professional development (PD) has been defined as facilitated teaching and learning experiences designed to enhance practitioners' knowledge, skills, and dispositions as well as their capacity to provide high-quality early learning experiences for young children. The purpose of this study was to use a framework from the National Professional Development Center on Inclusion (2008) to characterize key components of early childhood PD by conducting a descriptive systematic review of empirical literature.

Findings are reported related to the research methods and statistical techniques used in the 450 group quantitative studies examined as part of the literature review portion of the Division for Early Childhood Recommended Practices project. Results suggested that the methodological integrity of the quantitative research used to inform recommended practices was not uniformly convincing and compelling. 

This study evaluated an alternative method of identifying early reading difficulty. L. S. Fuchs and D. Fuchs (1998) proposed that academic problems could be indexed by a dual discrepancy on level and slope of performance, relative to classmates, on curriculum-based measurement tasks. 

The present research seeks to extend the previous studies to an even younger age group and focus on proximal colorfulness. With a sample of 15 pre-schoolers (3–4 years old) we examined whether a colorful play surface compared to a non-colorful (white) play surface would affect engagement in developmentally appropriate structured play. 

The purpose of this chapter is to present a combined research- and practice-based framework for integrating a comprehensive MTSS model with EBP, and thus, optimize the results stemming from school improvement efforts.

This presentation slide describes the important role of leadership in effective, efficient, and relevant PBIS implementation

This article layout two sets of findings: (1) what we know about the kind of instruction that weak readers need in kindergarten through second grade to prevent them from ever entering the downward spiral, and (2) what we know about the effectiveness of interventions that make use of this knowledge.

This article provides a case study (focus on an eighth-grader with autism) within a case study (focus on an urban middle school) in terms of the implementation of positive behavior support (PBS).

As students and educators go back to school across the country, and as Congress continues to debate how to fix the law commonly known as No Child Left Behind, the U.S. Department of Education announced today that states whose waivers from certain provisions of federal education law will expire at the end of the 2013-2014 school year will soon be able to request renewals of their reform plans, for up to two more years.

In order to ensure the Department's “Equity in IDEA” or “significant disproportionality” regulations effectively address significant disproportionality, the Department proposes to postpone the compliance date by two years, from July 1, 2018, to July 1, 2020

The goal of this study was to develop a brief assessment that could be conducted in the natural setting to identify naturally occurring, high-frequency subsequent events that may serve as maintaining consequences for disruptive behavior using the entire class as the unit of analysis. Procedures were conducted in two early childhood classrooms during regularly scheduled classroom activities.

In this introduction to the special issue, a response-to-instruction approach to learning disabilities (LD) identification is discussed

Effects of Michigan's law requiring all young children to be restrained when traveling in automobiles were assessed. Data on all reported residents of the state who were involved in crashes from 1978 through 1983 were examined using times-series analysis methods.

A review of 20 experimental, shared book reading (SBR) interventions using questioning strategies with preschool children was conducted. The studies were analyzed in terms of their quality, focus, and the questioning strategies employed. Although there were few methodological concerns about the studies conducted, treatment fidelity and replicability of the reported interventions are raised as issues needing attention in future research.

Results of this meta‐analysis research, testing for a moderator effect, show that support for the overjustification effect occurs only when intrinsic motivation is operationalized as task behaviour during a free‐time measure.

This paper considers what the research can tell us about how critical thinking is acquired, and the implications for how education might best develop young people’s critical thinking capabilities.

Help your students understand the perspectives of other people with these tried-and-tested methods.

In this quasi-experimental study, 608 fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students explored 5 historical investigations. In the experimental condition, teachers used a cognitive apprenticeship model to teach students historical reading and writing strategies. Comparison teachers used the same materials to deliver a business-as-usual form of instruction.

This research monograph offers early childhood educators a foundational resource of information needed to develop inclusion practices.

This study used a reversal design to examine the use of preprinted response cards on students' participation and off-task behavior during calendar circle-time in a rural kindergarten inclusion classroom. Results showed a functional relationship between preprinted response cards and increased participation and decreased off-task behavior for all 4 target students.

Determining what elementary teacher candidates need to know to effectively teach reading will aid in how preparation programs prepare future teachers. To understand state legislation targeting early reading instruction, this study compared the tenets of structured literacy, the reading method used in dyslexia programs, to scientific reading instruction.

The current review sought to describe the implementation and evaluation of trauma-focused school practices as represented in the published literature. Through a systematic literature search, we identified 39 articles describing trauma-focused practices implemented in school settings with elementary populations and coded data regarding these interventions’ characteristics as well as their implementation and evaluation procedures.