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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

Book in a Bag, BIB, social skills instruction, behavioral skills

College

David O. McKay School of Education

Department

Counseling Psychology and Special Education

Abstract

There is a much needed improvement in American school childrens’ 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. Magg (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.

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