Hill M. Walker

Integrated Approaches to Preventing Antisocial Behavior Patterns among School-Age Children and Youth

This article provides a reconceptualization of the role of schools in preventing antisocial behavior problems among children and youth. The U.S. Public Health Services conceptual model of prevention, involving primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention approaches, is used as an organizing framework to illustrate how schools can deliver interventions more effectively and improve outcomes. Traditional school approaches to coping with students who are at risk and antisocial are reviewed, and the following major topics are addressed: (a) A case is made that schools can play a central, coordinating role in collaboration with families and social service agencies in addressing the challenging problems presented by antisocial students; (b) a generic intervention approach is suggested that involves reducing risk factors for antisocial behavior and enhancing protective factors; (c) a three-level approach to organizing specific interventions for achieving prevention goals and outcomes is described; and (d) recommended interventions or approaches are suggested for each prevention level (i.e., primary, secondary, tertiary). The article concludes with a discussion of some factors associated with a revised mission for schools in this domain and how these factors may impair or enhance the necessary changes required to achieve this goal.

Antisocial behavior in school : strategies and best practices

Antisocial Behaviour Patterns in Children and Youth: Behavioural Characteristics, Causal Factors and Long-Term Negative Outcomes. Issues, Guidelines and Procedural Recommendations Regarding the Implementation and Delivery of Intervention Strategies Within Public School Settings. Establishing a School-Wide Discipline Plan. Instructing and Managing the Classroom Environment. Managing the Antisocial Student in the Classroom Setting. Managing the Antisocial Student on the Playground. Parent Involvement in the Schooling of Antisocial Students. Social Skills: Universal and Selected Interventions. Case Study Applications of Best Practices with Antisocial Students. Appendix A: Empirical Foundations in Discriminating, Predicting and Changing Aggressive, Antisocial Behaviour in School and Home Settings. Exhibit 1: The Influence of Arrest Status and Special Education Certification on Adjustment Status for At-Risk Students: Markers for Negative Developmental Outcomes. Exhibit 2: Regular Classroom Behavioural Profiles of Negative/Aggressive Versus Acting Out/Disruptive Students in the Primary Grades. Exhibit 3: Comparisons of the School Adjustment Status of Middle School, At-Risk Boys Who Are: (1) Deviant in Two or More Settings, (2) Deviant in Only One Setting and (3) Deviant in No Settings. Exhibit 4: Adjustment Profiles of Antisocial and At-Risk Middle School Boys. Exhibit 5: Positive Versus Negative Social Behavior in Discriminating Antisocial and At-Risk Students Within Playground and Classroom Settings. Exhibit 6: Differential Parenting Profiles that Discriminate Antisocial and At-Risk Students. Exhibit 7: The Path from Failed Parenting to Antisocial Behaviour in School to Delinquency in Adolescence. Exhibit 8: Generalization of Antisocial Behaviour Patterns from Home to School. Exhibit 9: The Efficacy of Praise, Token Reinforcement and Cost Contingency in Reducing Negative-Aggressive Social Interactions Among Antisocial Boys. Exhibit 10: Regular Classroom Applications of Reinforcement and Cost Contingency in Reducing Negative-Aggressive Social Interactions. Exhibit 11: The Efficacy of a Response-Cost Intervention for Increasing Positive Social Interactions Within Free-Play Settings. Exhibit 12: Cost Contingency and Its Frequency of Use in Maintaining Behavioural Levels. Exhibit 13: External Replications of the RECESS Program for Aggressive Students.

Preventing school violence: The use of office discipline referrals to assess and monitor school-wide discipline interventions.

Confronted by increasing incidents of violent behavior in schools, educators are being asked to make schools safer. Schools, however, receive little guidance or assistance in their attempts to establish and sustain proactive discipline systems. One area of need lies in directions for use of existing discipline information to improve school-wide behavior support. In this article, we describe how office discipline referrals might be used as an information source to provide an indicator of the status of school-wide discipline and to improve the precision with which schools manage, monitor, and modify their universal interventions for all students and their targeted interventions for students who exhibit the most severe problem behaviors.

First Step to Success An Early Intervention Approach for Preventing School Antisocial Behavior

This article reports results of a 4-year study designed to develop and initially evaluate a combined home and school intervention approach to preventing school antisocial behavior. The First Step to Success program targets at-risk kindergartners who show the early signs of an antisocial pattern of behavior (e.g., aggression, oppositional-defiant behavior, severe tantrumming, victimization of others). First Step to Success consists of three interconnected modules: (a) proactive, universal screening of all kindergartners; (b) school intervention involving the teacher, peers, and the target child; and (c) parent/caregiver training and involvement to support the childs school adjustment. The major goal of the program is to divert at-risk kindergartners from an antisocial path in their subsequent school careers. Two cohorts of at-risk kindergartners, consisting of 24 and 22 students, were identified and exposed to the First Step to Success program during the 1993–1994 and 1994–1995 school years, respectively. A randomized, experimental, wait-list control-group design was used to evaluate intervention effects. Cohort 1 and 2 subjects were followed up through Grades 2 and 1, respectively, with differing teachers and peer groups. Results indicated a measurable intervention effect for both cohorts and persistence of gains into the primary grades.

Early Identification and Intervention for Youth with Antisocial and Violent Behavior

This article addresses the growing problem of antisocial behavior in schools and its impact on safety, effectiveness, and ecology. We describe the factors leading to the development of antisocial behavior in children and youth. We explore the relationship between early investment in an antisocial behavior pattern and later negative outcomes including school failure, delinquency, and violence. The article also focuses on best practices in the areas of screening and early intervention for antisocial children and youth and those who are at risk for adopting this behavior pattern. Recommendations are made regarding research-based practices, tools, and approaches in both screening and intervention. A model for integrated approaches to school-based prevention of antisocial behavior is presented and the implications of such a model are discussed.

The Path to School Failure, Delinquency, and Violence: Causal Factors and Some Potential Solutions

This article addresses the issues associated with the path to school failure, delinquency, and violence that increasing numbers of our children and youth are following. Causal factors are identified and described, and the developmental nature of the path leading from exposure to risk factors to short- and long-term destructive outcomes is discussed. Prevention strategies for diverting at-risk children and youth from this path are also described and illustrated. These strategies include but are not limited to supporting families, developing and implementing school-based prevention approaches, supporting schools, improving academic and social competence, and achieving prevention goals through true collaborative arrangements between schools, families, and communities.

Special Education Implications of Point and Cumulative Prevalence for Children With Emotional or Behavioral Disorders

Prevalence of children with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) is a critical component in the discussion of underidentification of children served in special education. This discussion has previously focused almost exclusively on point prevalence or the number of children with EBD presumably needing services at any single point in time. Cumulative prevalence, on the other hand, is the number of children who have had EBD at some point in their lives before high school graduation. In the authors’ review of both types of prevalence, they found that estimates of the latter far exceed those of the former, significantly highlighting the service gap that exists between prevalence estimates and special education identification. Even when point prevalence is limited just to children with moderate or severe disorder, special education identification in the emotional disturbance category appears restricted to less than the bottom tenth of all children in need. Implications for special education are discussed, including issues around underidentification, misidentification, underservice, and related issues concerning children with EBD.

A Construct Score Approach to the Assessment of Social Competence Rationale, Technological Considerations, and Anticipated Outcomes

This article provides a selected review of the knowledge base on social competence in children. Using the existing literature on social competence as a point of departure, a case is made that (a) a social competence construct score approach to assessing social competence is needed, (b) theoretical and empirical advances in the social competence knowledge base and in microcomputer video assessment technology make such an approach feasible, and (c) direct assessment of childrens knowledge and perceptions of key social situations, tasks, and skills can now be accomplished with far greater precision and validity than heretofore. These developments now make it possible to profile and aggregate childrens social competence across four important domain areas commonly sampled in assessing social competence (i.e., sociometric procedures, direct observations in natural settings, parent and teacher ratings, and direct assessments of childrens knowledge and perceptions of social stimuli). Social competence construct scores, developed at both global and specific levels, can be used to construct such profiles.

First Step to Success: Intervening at the point of school entry to prevent antisocial behavior patterns

This article provides a description of the First Step to Success early intervention program for preventing development of antisocial behavior patterns among young, at-risk children. A brief review of the risk factors and family conditions associated with antisocial behavior patterns is provided as a context and rationale for early intervention approaches designed to divert at-risk children from this path. First Step to Success was developed as a response to the increasing numbers of at-risk children who begin school with the early signs of antisocial behavior due to the risk factors to which they have been exposed. This intervention program is coordinated and delivered by a school professional who can serve teachers and parents in a consultant capacity (e.g., school psychologist, early interventionist, school counselor, behavioral specialist, and so forth). The program has three modular components: proactive, universal screening, school intervention, and parent training. These components are applied in concert with each other to teach the at-risk target child an adaptive pattern of school-related behavior. A description of these components, and guidelines for implementing them, are presented as well. ©1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

A Longitudinal Assessment of the Development of Antisocial Behavior in Boys: Rationale, Methodology, and First-Year Results

The long-term consequences of antisocial behavior in children are well documented. Yet little is known about the pattern of development and sequence of antisocial behaviors in home and school settings. This article describes the rationale, methodology, and measures of a 5-year longitudinal research study of the development of antisocial behaviors in a high-risk population of boys in school settings. Subjects for this longitudinal study are 80 fifth-grade boys divided into two separate cohorts. These subjects were a subset of a sample of 200 boys included in an extensive study of the role of family variables in the development of antisocial behavior. Results from the first year of the study regarding 35 boys of Cohort I are presented in this paper. Multiple assessment methods were used including direct observations of social interactions in free-play activities and academic engaged time in classroom activities, teacher ratings of social skills, and examination of student records. Results indicated that subjects in the group more at risk for engaging in antisocial behavior were significantly different from subjects in the control group in their amounts of academic engaged time, frequencies of negative interactions with peers in playground situations, frequency of discipline contacts, and in teacher ratings of their social skills. Implications for identifying patterns and sequences of antisocial behavior are discussed