Creating Positive Elementary Classrooms: Preventing Behavior Challenges to Promote Learning (Special Education Law, Policy, and Practice)

Creating Positive Elementary Classrooms: Preventing Behavior Challenges to Promote Learning includes straightforward, feasible, and evidenced-based strategies designed to prevent behavior problems in K-5 classrooms. With an exclusive classroom focus, this practitioner-friendly book encourages teachers to be proactive in classroom management and guides them through the process of setting up their classrooms to maximize learning while focusing on prevention of behavior challenges. Its emphasis on catching behavior problems before they occur enables teachers to run their classrooms more efficiently and experience less frustration, while also increasing student learning. A well-organized, systematic, and predictable teaching environment helps to prevent challenging behaviors, and this book presents ways to achieve this type of classroom environment. Using real-life classroom scenarios, this guide equips teachers with management techniques that break the common cycle of frustration, aggression, rejection, and hostility, so they can create positive elementary classrooms.

Stephen W. Smith, Ph.D. is a professor of special education at the University of Florida (UF) teaching graduate courses in special education research, emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), and principles of prevention of behavior problems in education. His research focuses on effective behavioral prevention strategies, executive function, and the self-regulation of behavior (goal-directed effortful control of thought, action, emotion), issues related to aggression and violence in schools, and understanding verbal aggression of students with EBD. Dr. Smith has been Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator of 29 federal and state-funded research/development grants and is the author of 24 professional books and book chapters. Dr. Smith has presented over 200 professional papers and research findings at many state, regional, national, and international professional conferences. He has been invited to speak about educational issues in Ireland, Australia, and Taiwan. While at UF, Dr. Smith has received three teaching awards, a University Research Award, and has served twice as a UF Distinguished Research Professor. For 2013-2014, he was one of six recipients of a university-wide Doctoral Mentoring Award for outstanding work with doctoral students. He was the Irving & Rose Fein Endowed Professor from 2012-2015. Most recently, Dr. Smith was awarded the 2018 Distinguished Researcher Award from the American Education Research Association, Special Education special interest group and the 2023 Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Education, University of Kansas. Dr. Smith was a Panel Scientist for the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences for six years and is on the Editorial Board of a variety of professional journals in education, special education, and psychology. Prior to receiving his Ph.D. in special education from the University of Kansas, he was a teacher of special education students for eight years.

Mitchell L. Yell, PhD, is the Fred and Francis Lester Palmetto Chair in Teacher Education and a professor in special education at the University of South Carolina. His professional interests include special education law, IEP development, progress monitoring, and parent involvement in special education. Dr. Yell has published 136 journal articles, 6 textbooks, 36 book chapters, and has conducted numerous workshops on various aspects of special education law, classroom management, and progress monitoring. His textbook, Special Education and the Law, is in its 5th edition. He co-authored the text Developing Educationally Meaningful and Legally Sound IEPs. Dr. Bateman and Dr. Yell are the editors of the Special Education Law, Policy, and Practice series published by Rowman & Littlefield. In 2020, he was awarded the Researcher of the Year from the Council for Exceptional Children. Dr. Yell also serves as a State-level due process review officer (SRO) in South Carolina and is on the Board of Directors of the Council for Exceptional Children. Prior to working in higher education, Dr. Yell was a special education teacher in Minnesota for 12 years.