Behavioral Skills Training in Portuguese Children With School Failure Problems
A quick BST cycle in class lifts teacher-chosen academic, social, and basic skills for kids who are failing.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Galindo et al. (2018) worked with 19 Portuguese elementary pupils who were failing school. The team used a short Behavioral Skills Training package. They taught basic, academic, and social skills the teachers picked. The design was multiple baseline across students.
What they found
Every child reached the teacher-set goals after the BST lessons. Skills included raising hands, finishing worksheets, and joining peer groups. Gains showed up quickly and looked the same across kids.
How this fits with other research
Slane et al. (2021) reviewed 20 studies where BST trained teachers. Their big picture matches this paper: BST in classrooms keeps working. Kong et al. (2022) later used BST checklists with college students. They showed the same package can jump from kids with failure to typical older students. Shawler et al. (2021) moved BST online. High-school teachers learned AAC interventions through telehealth and still hit high fidelity. The 2018 paper is the brick they all build on.
Why it matters
You can copy this package on Monday. Pick one skill the teacher wants, model it, let the learner rehearse, give feedback, and repeat. It takes one short session and fits inside regular lessons. No extra gear needed.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This paper postulates that psychology can make an important contribution at an individual level to help children with school failure problems in a context where too little applied research has been conducted on the instructional needs of these children. Some data are analyzed, revealing that, despite some progress, school failure is still a main educational problem in many countries. In this study, Behavioral Skills Training (BST) was applied in Portugal to train children with school failure difficulties. BST is a method based on Applied Behavior Analysis, a teaching package consisting of a combination of behavioral techniques: instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. Two empirical studies are presented. Their main purpose was to develop behavioral diagnostic and training techniques to teach lacking skills. School success was defined in terms of a set of skills proposed by teachers and school failure as a lack of one or more of these skills. The main instrument was a package of training programs to be applied in three areas: basic behavior (precurrents), academic behavior, or social behavior. The second instrument is a package of check-lists, aimed to determine the level of performance of the child in an area. This check-list was applied before (pre-test) and after (post-test) training. In the first study, 16, 7- to 8-year old children were trained. They were attending the second or third grades and having academic difficulties of different origins. The effects of the training programs are evaluated in terms of percentage of attained objectives, comparing a pre- and a post-test. The results showed an increase in correct responses after training in all cases. To provide a sounder demonstration of the efficacy of the training programs, a second study was carried out using a quasi-experimental design. A multiple baseline design was applied to three 10- to 11-year-old children, referred by teachers because of learning difficulties in the fourth grade. Results showed few performance changes without training. Increases in behavior following BST were evident in all cases, indicating that training generated improvement in all three children. In both studies, comparable results occurred across students, demonstrating replication of the effects of the training programs.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2018 · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00437