Students who experience teacher caring and high expectations (i.e., warm demand) are typically more engaged and successful at school. Yet, relative to White students, students of color tend to report lower levels of school social belonging and more distant relationships with their White teachers. Leveraging data from 179 6th-9th grade Measures of…

Background: Educators in rural schools are uniquely situated to address youth mental health disparities, yet often face challenges in delivering mental health supports. This paper describes the process of adapting the evidence-based Coping Power program, a small group prevention program for youth with aggressive behavior problems, to be a…

This paper presents social validity findings from a mixed-methods study of educators who used a recently adapted online version of the research-based Double Check culturally-response practices and student engagement program. Results from 41 participants indicated that the program was easy to use, prompted them to reflect on their own culture, and…

Given the increased focus of educational research on what works for whom and under what circumstances over the last decade, educational researchers are increasingly turning toward mixture models to identify heterogeneous subgroups among students. Such data are inherently nested, as students are nested within classrooms and schools. Yet there has…

Educators have embraced the promotion of social emotional development, student well-being, and mental health as essential educational objectives to promote academic readiness and growth. To address known research-to-practice gaps and limited availability of evidence-based, universal high school programs, we took a community-based participatory…

Early career teachers experience exceptionally high rates of attrition from the profession, often due in part to elevated concerns about student behavior and poor occupational health. This study reports findings from a randomized controlled trial testing the combined effect of the PAX Good Behavior Game and MyTeachingPartner™ for 188 early career,…

Race-based bullying (RBB) victimization is a significant concern among youth and can translate into a range of adjustment problems. As such, additional research is needed on possible protective factors that may buffer these effects among RBB victims. One potential factor is school equity, as it may buffer race-based bullying victims from…

Introduction: Effective classroom management is critical to creating a classroom environment in which social, emotional, and academic learning can take place. The present study investigated the association between early career, early elementary teachers' occupational health (job stress, burnout, and perceived teaching ability) and perceptions of…

Teachers' classroom management practices are an essential aspect of supporting student engagement, yet they often vary in response to changing conditions in the classroom. This study explored the variability within middle school teachers' observed practice and their students' engagement as a function of contextual factors. Observers visited…

The importance of improving teachers' use of culturally responsive practice (CRP) in the classroom setting has been widely recognized. Although quantitative data on teachers' use of CRP has potential to be a helpful decision-making tool in advancing that goal, little is known about the psychometrics of classroom-based CRP measures, their utility…

The present study examined the association between students' perceptions of an equitable school climate and several psychosocial outcomes and tested whether these associations were moderated by students' race and gender. Data from 57,027 6th-12th grade students were analyzed using three-level models. Students who perceived their school to have a…

Propensity score matching and weighting methods are often used in observational effectiveness studies to reduce imbalance between treated and untreated groups on a set of potential confounders. However, much of the prior methodological literature on matching and weighting has yet to examine performance for scenarios with a majority of treated…

High quality teacher-student interactions are critical for the healthy social-emotional, behavioral, and academic development of middle school students. However, few studies have explored patterns of teacher-student interactions in middle school classrooms or the relation between teacher-, classroom-, and school-level factors and patterns of…

A growing body of research documents the positive impacts of teacher coaching, but research contrasting the effectiveness of different coaching approaches is limited. This study contrasted paired coaching -- delivered to two teachers simultaneously -- with traditional coaching for individual in-service teachers. We examined the effects of these…

As an example of how historical events may influence the findings and interpretations of a randomized trial, we use a school-based evaluation of a classroom management program that was conducted in a nearby district before and after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri (N = 102 teachers and 1,450 students). The findings suggest that…