The Impact of School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports Implementation On Middle School Students' Sense of Safety, Peer Relationships,Teacher Relationships, and Positive and Healthy Behaviors

During the middle school years, positive relationships with peers and adults as well as school attachment become important foundations for future social and academic success. As children transition towards adolescence and young adulthood, it is imperative that we create environments where they feel safe, respected, and able to succeed socially and academically. School-wide positive behavior interventions and supports (SWPBIS) is a conceptual framework intended to create school environments that are safe, respectful, consistent, and predictable. To achieve this goal, SWPBIS focuses on (a) clearly defining behavioral expectations, (b) proactively teaching appropriate behaviors, (c) rewarding students for engaging in appropriate behaviors, and (d) consistent consequences for inappropriate behaviors. Primarily implemented in elementary schools, SWPBIS has been associated with overall reductions in office discipline referrals and increases in school personnel perceptions of school safety. Little is known how SWPBIS implementation at the middle school level affects students’ perceptions of their environment and relationships with others as they mature into young adults making decisions likely to impact their lives significantly.

            We will present data from a 5-year randomized controlled trial testing the impact of SWPBIS implementation on student behavioral and academic outcomes as well as students’ perceptions of their environment, peer relationships, relationships with teachers and parents, and their own behavioral choices. Our study involved a total of 35 middle schools located in the Pacific Northwest, 18 of which were assigned to a treatment condition and 17 of which were assigned to a control condition. Schools in the treatment condition received intensive training and on-going coaching in SWPBIS implementation, and schools in the control condition received a one-day workshop on SWPBIS. Fidelity of implementation data indicated that the groups differed significantly on using SWPBIS practices.

            The primary focus of our presentation will be on the extent to which students’ perceptions of (a) their school environment as safe, (b) their peers as respectful, (c) school rules as consistent and predictable, (d) their relationship with their teachers as positive, (e) their relationship with their parents as positive, and (f) their own behavioral choices as positive and healthy differ across conditions. We will disaggregate data by student gender, race/ethnicity, and grade level to be able to draw sufficiently nuanced conclusions about the effectiveness of SWPBIS on increasing students’ sense of safety, comfort level with peer and adult relationships, and engagement in positive and healthy behaviors as they mature into young adults.

            Our presentation will provide valuable insight into how students perceptions of key variables associated with overall school success are impacted by SWPBIS implementation and how we might need to adapt SWPBIS implementation to tailor it specifically to overall students’ needs, or the specific needs of students from traditionally under-represented backgrounds.