By Michael Childs
A project developed by three College of Education faculty members is providing a new approach to help teachers identify and assist elementary school students who are at risk for academic, emotional and behavioral problems.
 “Project A.C.T. Early: Advancing the Competencies of Teachers for Early Behavioral Interventions of At-Risk Children” was created by Arthur M. Horne, professor of counseling and human development services; Jean A. Baker, assistant professor of educational psychology; and Randy W. Kamphaus, professor of educational psychology. The project is funded by a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
Four Athens-Clarke County elementary schools are collaborating in the project, with 49 teachers and 950 children participating from grades K-3. The project is in its third and final year of classroom application this fall.
According to national samples, as many as 47 percent of schoolchildren have behavioral risk factors. Behavior problems can lead to a variety of consequences, including learning problems, the development of violent behavior in adolescence and dropping out of school. In addition, teachers who leave the profession within the first five years say that they were not prepared for the kind of behavioral problems they encountered in the classroom and cite this as a primary reason for quitting.
“One explanation is that many teachers today are well trained in their academic disciplines and know their subject matter for teaching, but may have received less emphasis on topics such as classroom management, working with the diversity of circumstances they face in the classroom today and addressing the wide range of knowledge, skills and abilities that children bring with them as they enter school,” according to the project materials.
The project addresses both local and national issues:
- using new ways of identifying children who are at-risk for educational, emotional and behavioral problems.
- using technology to address problem areas.
- using solution-based--rather than problem-based--consultation to focus on positive change.
- helping teachers to use their knowledge and skills and to identify resources.
- working collaboratively to identify classroom and school-level concerns so that available resources are better recognized and utilized.
“First, we are using behavioral assessment information in a new way to help teachers reconceptualize child problems and identify children in need of prevention and early intervention services,” says Horne. “This new assessment methodology--dimensional assessment--is being compared and contrasted to the standard of practice.”
A computer network--the Group System Support, or GSS--helps teachers find resources and share information about problems and interventions.
“Researchers work collaboratively with schools to help teachers implement these solutions in the classroom,” Horne says. “This solution-focused collaboration helps teachers concentrate on what works in the classroom, shifting the focus to what a child can do. It gives teachers a sense of control and empowers them to develop positive change strategies. It also presents an alternative to traditional problem-focused methods (test-diagnose-place) which often prove to be ineffective.”
In the second year of the project, the researchers urged teachers not to look at their classrooms as behaviorally “flat”--where students are either good or bad--but as a pyramid with three levels of behavior assessment: low, moderate and high risk.
“This process provides teachers with the opportunity to recognize those children most in need of specific assistance and to tailor classroom interventions specifically to children’s needs,” says Horne.
Participating teachers say the project has given them tools to deal with at-risk students more effectively.
“I thought about my class differently this year because of A.C.T. Early,” says Karen Henkin, a first-grade teacher at Whit Davis Elementary.
In the project in Athens-Clarke, 16 percent of the students were classified as high risk, 31 percent as moderate risk and 55 percent as low risk.
“The numbers [of at-risk students] are larger and the behaviors are really much, much worse,” says Horne. “You hear people say, ‘Well, I was a teacher 20 years ago and I was able to handle a classroom’ but they didn’t have these kids in their classroom. Some of the kids we are dealing with today have concerns and problems that didn’t exist in these schools as recently as six years ago.”
But the researchers say they found the numbers encouraging in the second year of the project and believe that their methods are working.
“Our findings show some of the children who were identified as having problems, and who then were offered direction, had considerably better behavior in year two,” says Kamphaus. “This also suggests that the classroom teacher is a very important person for managing behavior in the classroom.”
The group is planning to seek additional funding to continue the project for another three years.
MORE INFO
A.C.T. EARLY Web site: www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Library/7709/
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