Book in a Bag: An Integrated Approach to Social Skills Instruction

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Jennae Thomas and Dr. Michelle Marchant, Counseling Psychology and Special Education

There is a much needed improvement in American school children’s behavior skills. Evidence of this concern comes from the increase in disciplinary referrals, suspensions, and expulsions (Sugai, G., Horner, R., Dunlap, G., Hieneman, M., Lewis, T., Nelson, C., et al 2000). With more effort and time directed at implementing these disciplinary actions, teachers are required to spend less time fulfilling their lesson plans. However, by including social skills in the normal curriculum, teachers would be able to use a universal preventive measure of educating, thus lowering the need for disciplinary intervention later. The research supports this offensive measure or “front-loaded” approach; indicating that it is not only more successful, but it also increases social skills (Lane, Gresham, & O’Shaughnessy, 2002;). Unfortunately, teachers are reluctant to spend the extra time teaching social skills due to increased accountability and time directed toward students’ achievement. Therefore, Book in a Bag (BIB) was designed to help teach social skills by embedding the social skills within the curriculum, instead of adding to the curriculum. Although, this solves the time issue of teaching an extra subject, it does not ensure that the students will apply their learned social skills to all environments; therefore, generalization has proven to be difficult. Mag (2006) suggests two ways of encouraging generalization. The first step is to select socially valid behaviors for all students through a systematic measure. Secondly, the social skills need to include peer groups and promote entrapment within the classroom’s social structure. The BIB research team has incorporated these two methods for enhancing generalization and plan on investigating the impact of the BIB curriculum on students’ generalization of social skills in the classroom.

It is hypothesized that integration of a social skills curriculum with other general curricula (e.g., literacy and social studies) allows students the opportunity to learn, practice, and use social skills. This is likely because of the students’ exposure to multiple examples of the social skill within the framework of various curricula and activities. It seems even more likely to produce generalization if and when the activities require students to learn, practice, and use the skill collaboratively. Integration and collaborative activities are both examples of what Stokes and Baer (1977) identify as natural maintaining contingencies that promote generalization of skills.

Most educators lack training in strategies, such as those discussed previously, that promote the emotional and behavioral skills of children and youth. The most widely used methods of discipline are punitive, such as depriving students of privileges, mobility (in the form of isolation or detention), or the company of friends; in-school suspension; and overcorrection (Cameron, 2006;). Evidence suggests that reactive and punitive practices are not effective (Skiba & Peterson, 2000;). In fact, they inadvertently reinforce antisocial behavior. Unfortunately, punitive discipline tends to predominate in proportion to the alternative (Skiba & Peterson, 2000), which is to take a positive, preventive approach to discipline. This leads one to realize the pertinence of infusing positive behavior support strategies into the schools. Involving educators in evidence-based methods proven to develop students’ social skills should accomplish this.

The Lakeview BIB Study will study the implementation of Lakeview faculty-created BIBs. Included in this study is a closer look at student use of social skills prior to implementation of a specific skill, during the month of instruction on that skill, and two months after the instruction has been delivered. This smaller piece was what I had proposed as my mentored research; however, the faculty did not complete their BIBs during the school year. Since this was not the first time that the BIB research team had difficulty encouraging teachers to write their own BIB curriculum, the team asked me to organize interviews with the faculty to determine why they were having difficulty completing their own BIBs and to rebuild our relationship with them.

Starting in January 2009, the research assistants and I began constructing interview questions through the guidance of the team. These questions were designed to determine exactly why the faculty was not completing their own BIBs. Once these questions were solidified, I scheduled to meet individually with each faculty member who was part of the BIB Developmental Group. Through the months of April, May, and June these interviews were recorded and transcribed. Currently, the research assistances are working on coding these interviews. This will make the information accessible for referencing in future publications.

The team hopes to use the interviews to publish a report about professionalism as this study has shown how difficult it is to develop a curriculum while staffing a public school. One of the reasons for not completing their BIBs was that the school had relocated over the summer. The faculty suggested that they had planned to use the time they spent relocating to develop their BIBs. Other teachers felt that the format or structure of the BIBs was too strict, restrictive, and time consuming. One solution, teachers suggested, was including more instruction and modeling of planning and writing BIBs. This feedback will allow us to better instruct future educators as to how to create their own BIBs. Overall, these interviews helped the research team better understand how to teach professionals.

References

  • Cameron, M. (2006). Managing school discipline and implications for social workers: A review of the literature. Children and Schools, 28(4), 219-227.
  • Lane, K. L., Gresham, F. M., & O’Shaughnessy, T. E. (2002). Serving students with or at risk for emotional and behavior disorders: Future challenges. Education and Treatment of Children, 25(4), 507-521.
  • Maag, J. W. (2006). Social skills training for students with emotional and behavioral disorders: A review of reviews. Behavioral Disorders, 32(1), 5-17.
  • Skiba, R. J., & Peterson, R. L. (2000). School discipline at a crossroads: From zero tolerance to early response [Electronic version]. Exceptional Children, 66, 335-347. Retrieved August 1, 2005, from ProQuest database.
  • Stokes, Trevor F., Baer, Donald M. (1977). An implicit technology of generalization. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 10 (2), 349.
  • Sugai, G., Horner, R., Dunlap, G., Hieneman, M., Lewis, T., Nelson, C., et al. (2000). Applying positive behavior support and functional behavioral assessment in schools. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 2(3), 131-143.