Testing the Efficacy of Embedded Social Skills within a Universal Classroom Management Program: Well-Managed Schools Project
This project is examining the efficacy of Well-Managed Schools (WMS), a universal classroom management program with embedded social skills instruction. WMS is a widely used but understudied program for use in general education classrooms. While much progress has been made in the area of school-wide systems of support, few classroom management programs teach social skills as part of daily activities. WMS provides a unique approach to classroom management through a focus on preventive strategies by embedding social skills instruction into daily instructional activities and using naturalistic opportunities to re-teach skills using teaching interactions. The main components that make up WMS include: (1) building positive relationships and classroom climate; (2) teaching school success skills; (3) reinforcing success skills to increase appropriate behavior; and (4) responding to inappropriate behavior through corrective teaching strategies.
Specifically, this randomized control trial with elementary school teachers and students will: (1) evaluate the efficacy of WMS to impact teacher short and long-term use of classroom management strategies; (2) examine the efficacy of embedded social skills instruction into universal classroom management to improve short and long-term outcomes for students in elementary schools; and (3) explore the role of mediating and moderating variables in relation to student outcomes. The study is being conducted with 1st through 5th grade elementary school teachers in the Midwest region, and their respective students.
Principal Investigator: Cleve Redmond
Funder: U.S. Department of Education Institute for Education Sciences