The Effects of Pre-Correction and Active Supervision on the Recess Behavior of Elementary Students.

Abstract Increasing a school's capacity to effectively deal with challenging behavior on a system-wide basis has increasingly been advocated as a promising practice. However, there is limited empirical support for large scale interventions focusing on specific school settings. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of implementing a pre-correction and active supervision strategy on the rate of problem behavior observed during recess on an elementary school playground. The study was conducted within the context of a larger school-wide behavioral support project. Using a multiple baseline across groups design, results indicated that the intervention reduced rates of problem behavior exhibited by elementary students, but was not effective in increasing rates of active supervision on the part of playground monitors. Implications for practical applications and research replications are discussed. A widely held belief and practice in elementary school programs is that recess provides an essential component of a child's educational and developmental needs (Wardle, 1990). Nevertheless, there is a growing concern among educators and parents regarding three trends. First, there is the concern of safety (Hendricks, 1993; Thompson, 1991; Wardle, 1990). For example, Thompson (1991) reported that more than 170,000 children are injured yearly on playgrounds in America. Directly related to safety is the second concern, the inadequacy of appropriate supervision (Colvin & Lowe, 1986). Finally, educators are increasingly concerned that children do not come to school prepared to engage in appropriate peer interactions during recess due to a lack of social skills (Bain & Farris, 1991; Cosden, Iannaccone, & Wienke, 1990). In an effort to ensure student safety and well being, active supervision has been singled out as one of the most essential features (Colvin & Lowe, 1986; Thompson, 1991; Wallach, 1988). Active supervision ensures that (a) children utilize the playground in a safe and orderly manner, (b) dangerous events or settings are identified in a timely manner, and (c) students play appropriately so that educational and developmental goals are more likely to be met (Colvin & Lowe, 1986; Thompson, 1991; Wallach, 1988). A recent trend, however, in elementary schools has been to shift the role of recess supervision from certified staff to classified staff (Nelson, Smith, & Colvin, 1995). One consequence of this trend is that the responsibility for supervision has been given to staff members with less formal training in instruction and managing student behavior. This may have the overall effect of weakening the quality of recess supervision. Supervision alone will not reduce the level of problem behaviors displayed during recess. Without necessary prerequisite social skills students are unable to comply with playground rules and adult directions. Both special and general educators indicate that increasingly larger numbers of students need social skill training (Bain & Farris, 1991; Fuller, Lewis, & Sugai, 1995; Sugai & Lewis, 1996). Surveys indicate that the problem is pervasive enough that educators feel all students should have some exposure to social skill instruction (Fuller et al., 1995). In addition, school-wide social skill training programs have recently been advocated as a promising practice to reduce overall levels of problem behavior in schools and to prevent more challenging behavior patterns among individual students (Lewis, Chard, & Scott, 1994; Lewis, Sugai, & Colvin, 1996; Sugai & Homer, 1994; Sugai & Lewis, 1996). While there is a large data-base to show that social skill instruction can increase the level of prosocial behaviors (Sugai & Lewis, 1996), the difficulty remains in promoting generalized responding beyond the training setting (Lewis et al., 1996). One promising strategy to promote generalized responding is the use of pre-correction and active supervision following social skill instruction (Colvin & Sugai, 1989; Colvin, Sugai, & Patching, 1993; Cotton, 1993; Lewis, 1992). …