Association for Behavior Analysis International

Measurement of behavior is crucial to learning environments and serves as a reality check, it is viewed as the difference between opinion and actual change (Vargas, 2009). Due to the current legislation and reauthorization of the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) there is a focus for teachers to improve the quality of programs by increasing the accountability for results (Christle, & Yell, 2010). Evidence-based practices that have been shown to be effective in classroom environments and aid teachers in collecting data include the use of self-management procedures and peers in the classroom. When students self-manage, teachers are free to attend to other classroom needs and instruction (Webber, Scheuermann, McCall, & Colemen, 1993). Peers may be able to observe and deliver consequences for another students behavior more often than the teacher (Strain, Cooke, & Apollone, 1976). This symposium will highlight two separate investigations that included the use of self-management and peers as components of the intervention. Effects of self-management procedures in the classroom and the feasibility of using peers in class wide and individual contingencies will be discussed.

Despite the increased demand for data collection in the special education settings, an agreed upon method for collecting data has yet to be identified. Two procedures that have demonstrated robust outcomes for collecting academic data for individual students are self-monitoring and peer management. Self-monitoring involves the student collecting measures on his or her own behavior(s) (Ferretti, Murphy, & Murphy, 1993). Peer management includes a student presenting prompts and providing feedback to another paired student (Dart, Collins, Klingbeil & Mckinley, 2014). The current investigation combined self-monitoring and peer management into a treatment package which was delivered in a staggered fashion to three dyads of students with moderate cognitive impairments during their independent math work time. Math performance on worksheets, fidelity of feedback, and positive math comments were measured for each participant. Overall results from the intervention suggest that only introducing a peer feedback treatment package will not produce significant increases in student performance on math worksheets. This presentation will discuss the use of add-on interventions and the need for consistency in instructional delivery as well as evidence-based curricula.

The U.S. Department of Education (2015) indicates that about 95% of students with special education eligibility are receiving some form of education in the general education setting. Past research indicates that students with disabilities tend to engage in more disruptive behaviors than their non-disabled peers (e.g., Murphy, Beadle-Brown, Wing, Gould, Shah, & Homes, 2005). If teachers are spending more time managing disruptive behaviors, time allocated to instruction is lost. Self-management is one evidence-based intervention that has demonstrated consistent effects for increasing on-task behavior and decreasing disruptive behaviors. Although feasible at the individual level, previous research has identified that class wide self-management interventions may be efficacious but not feasible to implement (Chafouleas, Hagermoser Sanetti, Jaffery, & Fallon, 2011). The purpose of the current study was to synthesize the research findings on self-management and group contingencies to make interventions at the class-wide level both feasible and efficacious. More specifically, the current study sought to compare the Self & Match system (Salter & Croce, 2015), a self-management intervention with a teacher match component, embedded within an independent and dependent group contingency, and observe the effects of the interventions on disruptive and on-task behaviors.