A Group Contingency Plus Self-Management Intervention Targeting At-Risk Secondary Students' Class-work and Active Responding

Incomplete written work and lack of active classroom responding are reported to be obstacles to secondary students' learning. Effective interventions found in meta-analytic reviews of the current research literature include: differential reinforcement of desired behaviors through group contingencies and self-management strategies (Hoagwood et al., 2007; Prout & Prout, 198; Stage & Quiroz, 1997). However, the current studies have mostly focused on elementary school settings. The purpose of the present study is to show that an independent group contingency combined with self-management strategies and randomized-reinforcer components can increase the amount of written work and active classroom responding in high school students. Three remedial reading classes with a total of 15 students participated in this study. Students used self-management strategies during independent reading time to increase the amount of writing in their reading logs. They used self-monitoring strategies to record whether or not they performed expected behaviors in class. A token economy was used to provide positive reinforcement for target responses. The results were analyzed through visual inspection of graphs and effect size computations and showed that the intervention increased the total amount of written words in the students' reading logs and overall classroom academic responding

Hispanic Mothers of Adolescents : Their Perceptions of Gender, Culture, and Parenting

Current research on adolescent Hispanic-Americans deals mostly with delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse, and teenage pregnancy. There is little, if any, information about adolescent Hispanic-American typical development. The purpose of this study was to provide a baseline of Hispanic mothers’ perceptions, focusing on five categories of questions: parenting style, acculturation, gender roles, adolescent’s behavior, and future goals and expectations. Perceptions of mothers having adolescent males were compared to the perceptions of mothers having adolescent females in the five clusters of questions in order to examine gender differences in the mothers’ responses. The study did not find gender differences in the responses made by the mothers in four of the five categories of questions. Acculturation and/or assimilation were examined in relation to the other four categories and were found to have a significant positive relationship with parenting style and future goals and expectations. Post hoc analysis revealed significant differences in the parenting style and gender roles categories based on the mother’s education

Effectiveness of the Behavior Disorder Program at Barton County Special Education Services : Comparing Initial Evaluation Against Three Year Reevaluation Results

Very few studies have dealt with the effectiveness of behavior disorder programs in special education. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the behavior disorder program at Barton County Special Education Services by analyzing the improvement seen in intelligence, academic achievement, and behavioral test scores of students receiving these services. The students’ initial evaluation results were compared to their own second and third reevaluation results to determine whether there was significant improvement over time. Significant changes in test results were not found between first and second, and first and third reevaluations. Some test comparisons were not possible to analyze due to inconsistencies in their use from the initial to the following evaluations