Judith J. Carta

Classwide Peer Tutoring

The purpose of this article is to discuss classwide peer tutoring as an effective instructional procedure. The article is organized into three major sections: (a) general principles of instruction, (b) description of classwide peer tutoring procedures, and (c) review of effectiveness data concerning classroom process (i.e., ecological and behavioral factors) and student achievement outcomes. It concludes with a discussion of the procedure and areas of future research and application.

Prevention and Intervention with Young Children's Challenging Behavior: Perspectives Regarding Current Knowledge.

Challenging behavior exhibited by young children is becoming recognized as a serious impediment to social–emotional development and a harbinger of severe maladjustment in school and adult life. Consequently, professionals and advocates from many disciplines have been seeking to define, elaborate, and improve on existing knowledge related to the prevention and resolution of young childrens challenging behaviors. Of particular concern for the field of behavioral disorders is the lack of correspondence between what is known about effective practices and what practices young children with challenging behavior typically receive. To increase the likelihood that children receive the best of evidence-based practices, the current analysis was conducted to provide a concise synthesis and summary of the principal evidence pertaining to the presence and impact, prevention, and intervention of challenging behaviors in young children. A consensus building process involving review and synthesis was used to produce brief summary statements encapsulating core conclusions from the existing evidence. This article presents these statements along with descriptions of the strength of the supporting evidence. The discussion addresses directions and priorities for practice and future research.

Developmentally Appropriate Practice Appraising Its Usefulness for Young Children with Disabilities

Recently, many educators have advocated the use of the Developmentally Appropriate Practice approach in preschool programs for young children who are developing normally, as well as for young children with special needs. This article reviews the rationales and basic premises of both the Developmentally Appropriate Practice approach and early childhood special education. We highlight areas in which developmentally appropriate practice guidelines overlap those of early childhood special education. We also point out the insufficiencies of these guidelines for planning, carrying out, and evaluating early childhood special education programs. We provide a selective literature review to clarify issues that still separate the two areas and discuss the implications of these divisions for future integration efforts. Finally, we offer suggestions for standards that should guide the evaluation of all programs that serve young children with disabilities.

Recommended Outcomes for Families of Young Children with Disabilities.

The Early Childhood Outcomes (ECO) Center was funded by the Office of Special Education Programs to promote the development and implementation of child and family outcome measures for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with disabilities. An evidence-based process with extensive stakeholder input led to the identification of five outcomes by which the effectiveness of services for families could be assessed: (a) families understand their childs strengths, abilities, and special needs; (b) families know their rights and advocate effectively for their child; (c) families help their child develop and learn; (d) families have support systems; and (e) families are able to gain access to desired services and activities in their community. These outcomes provide a framework by which states and the federal government could document whether early intervention and preschool programs are providing demonstrable benefits for families, and provide the basis for developing measurement systems to determine the extent to which such benefits have been attained.

Technologies for expanding the reach of evidence-based interventions: Preliminary results for promoting social-emotional development in early childhood

In great demand are efficient mechanisms for delivery of evidence-based interventions for promoting social-emotional development and early positive behavior of all children, and especially for those with or at risk for disabilities. The rise of Internet use has created potentially new avenues for intervention delivery, which, when paired with the many recent advances in computer networking and multimedia technology, is fueling this demand. This article describes the development of an Internet-based, computer-delivered parent-training intervention, Infant Net, with infants at risk for poor social-emotional outcomes. Results of a randomized control trial of the Infant Net intervention with 40 parent-infant dyads showed significant increase, reflecting a medium to large effect size, in infant social engagement and engagement with the environment for infants in the intervention group as compared to the control group. Implications are discussed with regard to future research.

Ecobehavioral Analysis of Classroom Instruction

For the past 25 years, massive efforts have been made to reduce the high incidence of academic delay and retardation experienced by students living in poverty. Despite these efforts, a large number of these students remain at risk due to environmental factors. Students are at risk because of both (1) cultural—familial factors related to the home and the community, and (2) factors related to the school. Research at the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project for the past 25 years has sought to address these factors through the development of home, community, and school intervention programs. In the late 1970s, however, it became clear that the problems of academic delay and development of commensurate instructional practices could not be accomplished with the then-current research tools based primarily on behavioral assessment and the manipulation of contingencies of reinforcement. While highly informative, solutions based on this technology were not yet sufficiently comprehensive to impact the entire school program nor did it enable researchers to investigate program variability over long periods of time. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the development and application of ecobehavioral assessment and the analysis of setting events related to the task of school improvement (i.e., development and evaluation of effective instructional practices). Ecobehavioral assessment has been an effort to create data systems capable of placing student responding within the context of the effort to teach, whether naturalistic teaching efforts or those guided by specific intervention protocols, and the time actually devoted to this effort. These data, coupled with both molar and molecular level analyses of the interaction of behavioral and setting factors has been, and continues to be, an important contributor to our research in urban schools. In this chapter, we illustrate the application of ecobehavioral assessment, the analysis of classroom setting events, and we discuss the implications for future work.

Expanding the Reach of Preventive Interventions Development of an Internet-Based Training for Parents of Infants

There are major obstacles to the effective delivery of mental health services to poor families, particularly for those families in rural areas. The rise of Internet use, however, has created potentially new avenues for service delivery, which, when paired with the many recent advances in computer networking and multimedia technology, is fueling a demand for Internet delivery of mental health services. The authors report on the adaptation of a parenting program for delivery via the Internet, enhanced with participant-created videos of parent-infant interactions and weekly staff contact, which enable distal treatment providers to give feedback and make decisions informed by direct behavioral assessment. This Internet-based, parent-education intervention has the potential to promote healthy and protective parent-infant interactions in families who might not otherwise receive needed mental health services.

Ecobehavioral analysis in the classroom: Review and implications

A rapidly developing area within applied behavior analysis that has implications for classroom instruction and behavior management is ecobehavioral analysis. Ecobehavioral analysis adds to behavior analysis the assessment of situational or contextual factors, such as classroom physical arrangements, instructional materials used by students, and teachers behavior. Its eventual importance and contribution to behavior analysis and to education, however, has yet to be realized. In fact, it is difficult to find adequate accounts of exactly what ecobehavioral analysis entails (Morris & Midgley, 1990). To date, it has led to a number of interesting contributions. These include the development and validation of specific classroom instructional procedures, the development of a number of approaches to the reduction of challenging behaviors, an improved understanding of the components of effective instruction including the identification of instructional risk factors within regular and special education, as well as providing a better understanding of how the quality of implementation functions as a mediating variable for student outcomes. In this paper, we discuss the theory and principles that support ecobehavioral analysis, review research literature concerning its use in educational settings, describe emerging applications by school personnel (e.g., teachers, school psychologists), and examine a number of future research directions and their implications.

Txt u ltr: using cellular phone technology to enhance a parenting intervention for families at risk for neglect.

One of the biggest challenges facing home visiting programs aimed at high-risk families is keeping families involved in the intervention. Cellular phones afford the opportunity for home visitors to maintain regular communication with parents between intervention visits and thus retain high-risk families in parenting interventions. The use of cellular phones may also increase the dosage of intervention provided to families and the fidelity with which parents implement the intervention, thus resulting in improved outcomes for parents and children. This brief report describes the development and initial testing of a parenting program, Planned Activities Training (PAT), which was enhanced through the use of cellular phones to promote the active engagement of parents. PAT is a five-session intervention aimed at improving parent-child interactions, increasing child engagement in daily activities, and reducing challenging child behaviors. To date, 19 parents have completed PAT and cell phone—enhanced PAT, and all have met the 90% correct mastery criterion and demonstrated improvements in their parenting behaviors. Parents have rated PAT and the text messaging and cellular phone call enhancements very positively.

Randomized trial of a cellular phone-enhanced home visitation parenting intervention

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Although home visiting programs have been documented to improve parenting in high-risk families, their effectiveness is diminished when parents disengage from programs. Cellular phones offer an approach to promoting parent engagement and enhancing parenting outcomes. Our objective was to examine whether mothers in a parenting intervention, Planned Activities Training (PAT), or cellular phone-enhanced version (CPAT) of the intervention would demonstrate greater use of parenting strategies after treatment and at 6 months post-treatment compared with a wait-list control (WLC). METHODS: A sample of 371 low-income mothers and their 3.5- to 5.5-year-old children were randomly assigned to condition and assessed at pre-test, post-intervention, and 6 months post-intervention. Treatment efficacy was evaluated through observations of mother-child interactions as well as maternal interviews about depression, parenting stress, and child behaviors. RESULTS: Mothers receiving PAT and CPAT demonstrated more frequent use of parenting strategies and engaged in more responsive parenting than mothers in the WLC. Mothers receiving CPAT used more PAT parenting strategies than mothers in the other 2 groups and experienced greater reductions in depression and stress. Children of mothers receiving PAT and CPAT demonstrated higher rates of positive engagement, and children of CPAT mothers demonstrated higher levels of adaptive behaviors than children in the WLC. Importantly, changes in parenting, depression, and stress predicted positive child behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: PAT and CPAT conditions improved parenting strategies and child engagement and reduced children’s challenging behaviors. The addition of cellular phones to a home visiting program enhanced maternal responsivity and reduced depression and stress.