National Climate Change: Doubling Down on Our Precision and Emphasis on Prevention and Behavioral Sciences

National Climate Change

Communities, families, and schools are witnessing and experiencing the social and political effects of the culmination of a fierce and contentious U.S. presidential election campaign and the even greater impact of a significant change in the composition, organization, and functioning of the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of the U.S. government. In response, public reaction and activism have escalated in forms and intensities that have not been experienced in recent decades. Social media have become major outlets for individual and group voices. Informal and formal groups have increased their levels of advocacy, activism, and visibility.

Although we acknowledge and praise the rights of individuals and groups to exercise freedoms of speech, press, assembly, religion, and petition, we are troubled by some of the contentious, hostile, malicious, hurtful, and derogatory forms in which these freedoms are being expressed. Recent headlines have highlighted the dangerous side effects of a divided nation, where hate is not only being modeled and reinforced on a national stage, but is also spilling into classrooms and schools (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016a, 2016b). Reports of bullying incidents and hate crimes have sharply increased in schools (e.g., CBS News, November 13, 2016; PBS NewsHour, November 11, 2016; Wallace & LaMotte, November 30, 2016) and communities (Bailey, November 14, 2016) during and following this election season. The Southern Poverty Law Center (2016a) reported that 21% of the 861 post-election hate incidents occurred in K-12 schools, and numerous reports indicate an increase in demand for mental health support for teens and adults since the election (e.g., Market Watch, November, 12, 2016, CBS Chicago, November, 13, 2016, KNPR, December 9, 2016).

These conditions present educators with significant and immediate challenges in supporting students while facing their own feelings of stress, confusion, and lack of preparedness. Students are arriving at school anxious, upset, scared, stressed, or angry. Although some students successfully and productively move through their day, others display signs of withdrawal, anxiety, depression, or other mental health concerns. In addition, students may bring hurtful speech and actions into school, be victimized by hurtful acts, or be bystanders watching others experience hurtful conduct and often experiencing adverse reactions themselves.

In June of 2016, Sugai, Horner, and Lewis suggested that a two-prong prevention approach was needed to address the many significant challenges confronting educators in schools. They described the first, long-vision prong as an emphasis “on prevention that requires a systematic and deliberate implementation of daily proactive practices,” and the second, short-vision prong as “an emphasis on implementation of immediate and daily prevention practices—that is, what do we do every day, all day, and across all school settings to reduce the likelihood of minor and major behavior incidents and increase the probability of displays of prosocial behavior.” For short- and long-term prevention practices to be effective, the authors suggested that equal, if not more, attention should be focused on the systems that maximize staff capacity to implement these practices with the greatest fidelity over the longest periods of time.

Doubling Down Now With Prevention and Behavioral Science

Given these dramatic changes in our national, community, and school climates, we suggest that educators and school mental health professionals must not wait until students demonstrate signs of stress, trauma, and mental illness that are associated with incidents of discrimination, bullying, harassment, and exclusion. We should not assume that students and their families have or will develop the capacity to respond to and address these incidents and their effects. We must act now and proactively to address students’ social, mental, and behavioral needs; to bolster positive school climates so that learning can occur; and to firm up our relationships with students to ensure that they feel safe, appreciated, and respected.

Acting now is important and doable for several frequently promoted reasons. First, schools often serve as the de facto mental health support system for students. Providing all students with a safe, predictable, and positive environment is critical and often a prerequisite to effectively addressing many mental health concerns (Bazelon Center, 2006). Second, implementing basic positive and proactive practices works (Horner et al., 2015). When these key practices are implemented well, students’ social, emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes improve. Finally, by implementing positive, proactive practices, schools can more effectively support students who may experience greater difficulties and require additional support (Forman et al., in press; Kutash et al., 2006; Walker et al., 2005).

Over the last three decades, the value, evidence, and features of prevention and behavioral sciences have been recommended as the first line of action for affecting the incidence and prevalence of problem behaviors and societal challenges (Biglan, 1995; Biglan et al., 2012; Mayer, 1995; Walker et al., 1996). In 2015, Biglan presented convincingly that we have well-documented practices grounded in behavioral science that can improve some of the most pressing challenges of our present-day society and culture. More importantly, he emphasized that these practices are only as good as our capacity to implement them within a nurturing prevention science approach.

In this article, we suggest that the challenges of the past and present are clear and that now is the time to double down on promoting practices that we know work and have the greatest likelihood of being implemented with fidelity over time in classrooms and schools. Specifically, although we acknowledge that a diverse range of effective practices and interventions exists, we propose that educators must select practices that can be done daily with high levels of fidelity and sustainability and that have the greatest likelihood of producing observable and educationally meaningful outcomes (Horner et al., in press; Sadler & Sugai, 2009). Thus, we present a set of principles that guide the selection and use of an explicit set of prevention and behavioral practices and systems for all classrooms and schools.

Starting With Effective and Efficient Implementation Capacity

Given the wide array of evidence- and non-evidence-based choices, the selection and use of academic and behavioral support practices must be informed and justified. Recent emphasis has been on investing in comprehensive implementation frameworks (e.g., multitiered systems of support, response to intervention, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports [PBIS], integrated systems frameworks) that organize multiple practices and interventions and give us the means to improve decision making (Sugai et al., 2016). Across these systems, a number of shared principles guide practice selection and implementation efforts. Central to these systems is the establishment of a leadership team that is responsible for operationalizing these principles and administering practice use. This leadership team has a number of important characteristics.

First, a leadership team must have representation from the organization that is charged with practice selection and implementation. Although variation exists across school size, level, and type, membership is represented generally by individuals who will be asked to implement a given practice, for example, grade-level teachers, non-teaching staff (e.g., paraprofessional, office, custodial), related specialists (e.g., nursing, special education, counseling, speech, school psychologists), and administrators. At the middle and high school levels, departmental representation (e.g., science, arts, counseling) may replace grade-level representation. Parental and student membership and voice are strongly recommended; however, given concerns related to confidentiality and privacy, ad hoc (as needed) involvement may be appropriate. Individual members should indicate their commitment to the indicated purpose and expected outcomes, to active participation, and to supporting the colleagues they represent.

Second, this leadership team must have the authority to make school-wide decisions and to develop and coordinate a three- to five-year implementation action plan. This authority may require a careful mapping of existing and upcoming initiatives and decisions regarding priority, alignment, and integration. Given the immediacy of the current national school climate change, behavioral prevention and intervention efforts should be among the top two to three school improvement targets if intervention fidelity and sustainability are to be maximized. Leadership team responsibilities include (1) revising and writing of policy and implementation procedures, (2) shaping professional development content and schedules, (3) establishing a regular and protected meeting schedule, (4) securing funding to cover implementation activities, and (5) scheduling regular opportunities to report and engage at faculty and staff meetings. District-level commitment and support (e.g., policy, expert personnel, procedures, funding) that are aligned with and enabling of school efforts are also critical to leadership team authority.

Third, the collective membership of the leadership team should have content knowledge and fluency related to characteristics, implementation, and evaluation of effective behavioral practices and systems, especially as they relate to current behavioral issues, prevention, and behavioral sciences. The important interactive association of academic, behavioral, and mental health practices and outcomes should be explicitly targeted by the team and prioritized by the staff as a whole.

Finally, leadership team decision making, implementation management, and progress evaluation should be guided by principles that maximize durable intervention fidelity, maintain positive classroom and school climate priority for all students and staff and family members, and boost student outcomes. The goals are to align system structures, integrate system resources, and leverage system functions to maximize supports for effective teacher interactions with students. A sample of these guidelines is included in Table 1.

Table 1.

Maximizing Supports for Effective Teacher Interactions With Students

Guiding Implementation Principles	Example Decision-Making Questions
1. Align and integrate academic and behavior supports.	Do all staff and students understand and act based on the reciprocal relationship between academic and social behavior success? Are comparable decisions made for both academic and social behavior outcomes? Are implementation supports for academic and behavioral interventions used to promote and encourage the use of effective interventions by teachers and staff?
2. Invest in prevention first.	How do all staff members support all students in all settings to increase the likelihood of desired outcomes and reduce the risk for all students? If not occurring yet, how can we reduce the probability that it will happen? If just starting to occur, how can we reduce its impact (intensity, frequency, impact, duration)? If occurring, how can we prevent it from worsening (intensity, frequency, impact, duration)? If occurrences are chronic, what can we do differently that is more targeted and/or indicated?
3. Use local data to understand and address pressing questions, needs, concerns, and challenges.	What is happening? How often is it happening? Where is it happening? Who is involved? Why is it happening? What would we like to see happening instead? What are we doing now and how well?
4. Screen regularly and monitor progress continuously.	Do we have any students who present indications of possible risk and/or who display high-risk behaviors that are unresponsive to existing supports? Do we conduct classroom and school-wide behavior and mental health screening procedures at least monthly? Do we monitor student progress on (a) school-wide expectations weekly and (b) individual behavior expectations at least daily?
5. Give priority to selection and use of empirically supported practices that are contextually appropriate.	What quantitative and replicated research documents effectiveness of a practice? Under what conditions and context was practice documented? How strong is the alignment between the research outcomes and our needs? How similar/different are the implementation conditions of the research and our applied setting/context? How does this practice align, conflict, integrate, etc., with our current practices? How does this practice directly and efficiently address our current needs?
6. Organize high fidelity use of practices and systems in a multitiered system of supports.	Are all students explicitly taught (e.g., defined, modeled, practiced, reminded, reinforced) school-wide behavioral expectations in classroom and non-classroom settings? Are decision rules in place for timely identification of students who need more targeted and/or indicated behavior supports? Are school-wide, small-group, and individual behavior support practices sequenced and aligned?
7. Consider culture and context in practice and implementation decisions.	Has culture been broadly considered and explicitly defined (e.g., gender, religion, race, neighborhood, family, disability, LGBTQ, SES, education)? Has the district/school/faculty communicated a clear commitment to promoting and protecting diversity (e.g., gender, religion, race, neighborhood, family, disability, LGBTQ, SES, education)? Have individual and school-wide staff learning and cultural histories and their influence been reviewed and reconsidered? Have individual and group student learning and cultural histories and their influences been reviewed and reconsidered? Have strategies and perspectives been implemented that consider and improve the interaction of student and staff and family members?
8. Embed professional development and use into the regular routines of schools and classrooms.	Do we use one-time professional development events to establish agreement about need, solution, and implementation action plan? Do we develop action plan activities that embed development of implementation accuracy and fluency into existing scheduled opportunities (e.g., grade level/department meetings, all staff meetings, shared electronic communication systems)? Do we provide ongoing explicit training in key prevention and behavior support practices for all staff? Is coaching done to support teacher and staff use of academic and behavioral practices? Is fidelity of the use of interventions done regularly with the data used to improve supports for teachers and staff?
9. Establish sustainable, fluent, and local behavioral expertise.	Do we have formal systems (i.e., teams) at the school-wide level for maintaining high intervention fidelity of Tier 1 prevention practices for all students and staff across all school settings? Do we have formal specialized behavior support expertise for continuous use and monitoring of targeted group and indicated individual behavior supports? Do the district and/or region have formalized systems and expertise to support school level use of a full continuum of behavior support?

An Explicit Set of Evidence-Based Prevention and Behavioral Practices

Given the foundations of capacity development, leadership team, and guiding decision-making principles, the next priority is the selection and use of effective prevention and behavioral practices, strategies, and interventions that are experienced directly by students. Generally, for example, the Southern Poverty Law Center (2016b, p. 13) recommends that school administrators should (1) “set the tone … to affirm your school’s values, set expectations about inclusion and respect, and explain your vision for the school community,” (2) “take care of the wounded … to provide for the needs of specific students … some [of whom] are experiencing trauma,” (3) “double down on anti-bullying strategies … everyone can be an ally and upstander,” (4) “encourage courage … to speak up when they see or hear something that denigrates any member of the school community,” and (5) “be ready for a crisis … you will not have time to learn how to manage it: … be prepared.”

More specifically, the focus is on achieving educationally important and measurable student outcomes, for example:

• Reductions in norm-violating behavior;

• Increases in student self-management behaviors;

• Decreases in teasing and harassment;

• Increases in reported positive classroom and school climates;

• Decreases in the use of reactive management practices; and

• Increases in attendance and academic engagement.

We emphasize the use of immediate and daily prevention practices—that is, what we do every day, all day, across all school settings to reduce the likelihood of minor and major behavior incidents and increase the probability of displays of prosocial behavior.

For example, every staff member during every lesson and for all students must:

• Set challenging and achievable academic and behavior goals;

• Model positive examples of the expected social skills and behaviors expected from students;

• Prompt/cue and recognize desired social behavior at higher rates than are used for negative or norm-violating behavior;

• Maximize every minute for successful academic and behavioral engagements; and

• Continuously and actively supervise all students across all settings at all times (Myers et al., in press; Scott, 2017; Simonsen & Myers, 2015).

On an hourly and daily basis, minor behavior incidents (e.g., noises, out of seat, off task) should be treated constructively, quickly, and quietly. Incidents of minor disruptive behavior represent teachable moments or opportunities to remind students of the desired behavior and to prompt and reinforce future opportunities. The process of handling minor behavior incidents should never sacrifice instructional time for any student, and if minor behaviors become chronic, the focus shifts toward a plan that rearranges conditions so that the opportunity to engage in problem behavior is reduced or eliminated. More information and specific examples of practices are available in the Office of Special Education Programs guide Supporting and Responding to Behavior (OSEP, 2015).

Every major behavior event (e.g., fighting, harassment, chronic or significantly disruptive non-compliance) should be treated as a “bad” habit that has worked for the student in the past and is highly likely to continue to occur under specific situations (Duhigg, 2012). Because a bad habit, by definition, is chronic, well-learned, and efficient, solutions must be much more informed and targeted (O’Neill et al., 2015). That is, the intervention must be based on a specific understanding of the triggering and maintaining conditions and on the development of a specialized intervention that formally cues and rewards desired behavior and carefully eliminates competing cues and rewards for problem behavior. This plan must provide at least hourly implementation schedules (especially in the most likely problem behavior settings) by individuals who are better at doing the intervention than the student is at doing the problem behavior. Daily progress monitoring is required to enable immediate tweaking of the intervention to improve effectiveness and efficiency.

Thus, the short view focuses on what adults do now with every instructional and social engagement opportunity. To summarize, educators should invest in and use five empirically supported, high-impact practices (Center on PBIS, 2017, p. 2–3):

1. Establish positively stated expectations that explicitly communicate respect for all students and that value and embrace diversity among students as well as adults. Clearly describe how students and adults can display observable expectations in each classroom routine and school setting that contribute to a common language and a predictable, respectful, and safe experience for all.

2. Explicitly and purposefully teach expectations across all classroom routines and school settings. Specifically define, model, and practice each expectation, and use positive and negative examples so that students see the line between appropriate and inappropriate behavior and actions. Also, teach students specific problem-solving strategies for instances in which they experience or see disrespectful behavior. Create a school-wide “stop signal” for disrespect. Teach students to use that signal to walk away from disrespectful acts. Show students how to use that signal when standing with a peer who is experiencing disrespectful behavior, and help students identify how and when they should report disrespectful actions to an adult.

   If simple instruction is not sufficient, adopt a structured social skills program. For example, at Bully Prevention (http://www.pbis.org/school/bully-prevention), a number of free, empirically supported curricula are available to supplement school-specific lessons. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning site (www.casel.org) is a useful guide to other curricula. Consider explicitly teaching expectations in the context of the national dialogue through practice and mini-lessons on how to interact respectfully with others who support different political positions.

3. Give specific praise for displays of appropriate behavior. Actively supervise students to catch as many instances of appropriate behavior as possible. When disrespectful behavior occurs, provide a specific error correction to identify the mistake and to teach and practice the correct response. Give feedback so that praise exceeds corrections (e.g., 4 to 1 ratio).

4. Use data to monitor implementation, and screen for students who require more intensive support. Monitor how lessons are provided and how students respond to the behavior of their peers. Although published screening and progress monitoring tools are available, start regularly examining existing data sources (e.g., office referrals, school nurse visits, academic failure, attendance) to identify students who may require more targeted or intensive supports. Look for students who display interpersonal challenges (e.g., teasing, intimidation, harassment) as well as personal challenges (e.g., withdrawal, anxiety, self-harm).

   Utilize school climate data to examine experiences of groups of students who may be more personally affected by the national conversation, including students who identify as Muslim, Jewish, Latino, black, or LGBTQ; have disabilities, history of trauma, or mental health challenges; have recently immigrated to the United States or have family members who are immigrants; or who represent other diverse backgrounds. Diversity is a positive quality; embracing and valuing diversity requires a safe, respectful environment and a deliberate approach that supports all students, families, and staff members.

5. Provide a differentiated continuum of positive support for students that integrates and addresses academic, behavioral, social, and emotional needs and expectations within a multitiered systems of support framework, such as Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) or Response to Intervention (RtI). Work as teams within multitiered systems of support to identify and deliver appropriate practices for students who require targeted or intensive support. Use student responsiveness to intervention to move to more or less specialized supports.

Concluding Comments

We acknowledge that few prevention and behavioral researchers and practitioners will be surprised by the practices, guiding principles, and systems we describe in this article. However, in the current climate, we strongly suggest that educators revisit and implement positive and proactive practices to support all students, and we encourage an immediate and explicit reinvestment and doubling down of their use. These steps will help ensure that all schools provide students with a nurturing, safe, positive, and predictable environment free from harassment, bullying, hate speech, and other negative behaviors currently being modeled and reinforced in the media and in communities across our country.

In a short period of time, our social and political landscape has been altered such that norms of civility, respect, permission, and responsibility have shifted dramatically. Some of these shifts are positive: engagement, voice, and participation have increased. However, at the same time, we are concerned by reports of the associated change in antisocial behaviors displayed by children, youth, and adults and the cumulative negative effects on instructional and social climates of classrooms and schools.

Major societal shifts are sometimes followed by a period of wait-and-see and attempts to react to bursts in antisocial behavior by “getting tough” and putting in place zero tolerance policies and procedures. Although corrective actions may be necessary, we encourage educators in classrooms and schools in particular to not regress to punishment-based responses that contribute to negative school climates and adversely affect the academic and social behavior development of students. Instead, we emphatically advocate that educators must act now in preventive, deliberate, and actionable ways that students experience every moment of every school day and that promote safe, respectful, and trusting relationships of students with adults, adults with other adults, and students with other students. This immediate response is intended to prevent development and occurrences of disrespectful, irresponsible, discriminatory, and hurtful behavior and to reduce the intensity, frequency, duration, and impact of existing antisocial behavior. The long view is to invest in effective preventive practices and systems that sustain positive, respectful, caring, and effective classroom and school climates for all students. Limiting our focus to reactive management and a wait-and-see approach increases the likelihood that significant events may occur, resulting in significant emotional and behavioral consequences and long-term negative climates and consequences.

Contemporary school and classroom challenges must be defined, verified, and discussed. However, emphasis must be shifted quickly from rumination to prevention. A multitiered system of prevention practices requires moment-to-moment, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, month-to-month, and year-to-year engagement. Practice selection and adoption are necessary but insufficient. Equal, if not more, attention must be directed toward systems or organizational supports (leadership, decision making, support continuum) that enable practice use to be effective, efficient, durable, and relevant. If intervention fidelity is high and sustained, preventing the development and occurrences of our contemporary challenges is thinkable and doable.