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Ohio University researchers want to help teachers manage behavioral issues in the classroom
By: David Forster
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Educators face enough challenges on a day-to-day basis as is. Behavioral issues in the classroom are just one thing reducing instructional time.
Julie Owens is a professor of psychology and director of the Center for Intervention Research in Schools at Ohio University. She was part of a research team that looked at how different levels of coaching might help teachers better deal with behavioral issues in the classroom.
Owens sat down to speak with WOUB’s David Forster for “Modern Science.”
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
On the challenges behavioral issues have on teaching
“Broadly speaking, my work focuses on how we can improve behavioral supports for students with ADHD, particularly in schools.
“Children with ADHD often have difficulty making and keeping friends, following those behavioral expectations and meeting the demands academically. But research shows that when we embed behavioral supports in the classroom, we can really maximize the benefits for students with ADHD because it’s providing supports at the point of performance or the point at which they’re struggling.
“The challenge is for teachers, they’re trying to meet the needs of students academically, socially, behaviorally and they receive pretty limited training on how to create these behavioral supports or how to implement them with consistency, or how to design an intervention that’s well matched to the student’s needs.”
On the shortcomings of conventional classroom management training
“The problem was some of our studies showed that up to 30% of teachers who even got that type of coaching were still struggling to implement these practices in a consistent way. That’s when we became interested in what more is needed.”
On the program they developed to provide enhanced levels of coaching
“We developed the multicomponent motivational coaching program that added conversations that motivated teachers to really think about these practices as important as their academic instruction. Then we also added components to address common barriers.
“Could we enhance their knowledge of the intervention? Could we enhance their confidence by really giving them the opportunity to practice this skill in real time with us?
“Even addressing things like stress. Teachers have a highly stressful job that can get in the way and beliefs they have about these interventions or about the students.
“We then in this randomized controlled trial compared that standard consultation with just problem solving and performance feedback to this multicomponent motivational coaching.”
What this new multicomponent program produced
“The good news, first off, is that teachers in both conditions significantly improved on most of the practices we were focusing on. The coaching works in both conditions and students in their classrooms.
“We also saw significant reductions in those disruptive behaviors. That’s good because less disruptive behaviors means more time for instruction, which is what’s most important to teachers.
“In addition to that, though, we also found that among those teachers who were struggling either didn’t view classroom management as that important or had barriers to implementation. That enhanced condition led to greater improvement than the standard condition, particularly in that really important practice of responding effectively to disruptive behavior.
“I understand we have limited resources in schools, but how do we best position those resources to provide supports to teachers? Because that does benefit our students.”
The first draft of the transcript used for this story was created in Adobe Podcast, which includes an AI transcription tool. A WOUB news editor then reviewed, corrected and reformatted the transcript before publication.