Table 1.

Operational Definitions of Classroom Management Skills

Classroom Management Skill	Operational Definition
Group opportunity to respond (OTR)	Teacher provides class group with an opportunity to respond to a question or request related to the lesson. The required response to questions can be verbal or gestural (e.g., thumbs up). All OTRs must be related to the academic or behavioral curriculum. Rhetorical questions that are not meant to solicit a student response are not OTRs.
Individual opportunity to respond (OTR)	Teacher asks a question related to the lesson directed at an individual student. The required response to the question(s) can be verbal or gestural. All OTRs must be related to the academic or behavioral curriculum. Rhetorical questions that are not meant to solicit a student response are not OTRs.
Behavior-specific praise (BSP)	Teacher gives an individual student or whole class behavior-specific praise. Behavior-specific praise is a contingent verbal statement that communicates positive feedback to a student and explicitly tells student(s) what they did right (e.g., “Good job, I like that you raised your hand.”)
Prompting for expectations	Prompts and pre-corrections are specific cues that provide students with information about the behavior desired in specific situations. Teacher-delivered prompts may be verbal, nonverbal, or both. For example, a teacher may prompt students to raise their hands by raising his or her hand (a nonverbal model) and saying: “Remember how to get my attention appropriately during a lesson.” For a teacher-delivered cue to serve as a prompt for social behavior, it must be presented before the behavior is expected (rather than after), and it must specify the desired social behavior. A pre-correction is defined as an antecedent instructional event designed to prevent the occurrence of predictable problem behavior and to facilitate the occurrence of more appropriate replacement behavior. Pre-corrections consist of verbal reminders, behavioral rehearsals, or demonstrations of rule following or socially appropriate behaviors that are presented in or before settings where problem behavior is likely. For example, if students predictably enter the classroom from recess shouting at each other and running into the classroom, a pre-correction might consist of a brief role play of walking into class and using a quiet voice before the students begin recess.