Thu,
09/10/2020 – 16:19pm | By: Van Arnold

Dr. Stephanie Smith, assistant professor of psychology at The University of Southern
Mississippi, has been awarded a three-year grant from the Institute of Education Sciences
to develop and implement technology that will support teachers’ delivery of an evidence-based
intervention – the Good Behavior Game – in educational settings.

The $1.36 million award comes after three painstaking years of work by Smith, who
is the residing Nina Bell Suggs Professor of Psychology at USM. Smith also serves
as an adjunct assistant professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University.

The grant is titled: “The Development of New Technology to Promote the Fidelity and
Sustainability of a Universal Preventive Intervention in Real-World Educational Settings.”
Dr. Brad Dufrene, USM professor of psychology, will serve as co-principal investigator
on the grant project.

The Good Behavior Game is an evidence-based behavioral classroom management strategy that helps children
learn how to work together to create a positive learning environment. It promotes
each child’s positive behavior by rewarding student teams for complying with criteria
set for appropriate behavior, such as working quietly, following directions, or being
polite to each other. The team-based approach uses peer encouragement to help children
follow the rules of the classroom. It also enables teachers to build strong academic
skills and positive behaviors among students.

The grant concept sprang from Smith’s postdoctoral research fellowship at the Yale
Child Study Center. At that time, she served as a key investigator of a $4 million
National Institutes of Health award whereby she trained teachers on how to implement
the Good Behavior Game in their classrooms.

“I saw first-hand how this added responsibility may be burdensome for teachers and
what implementation errors could be made. This experience led to the development of
this grant idea,” said Smith.

Smith points out that the Good Behavior Game has been shown to significantly improve
students’ disruptive behaviors, such as aggression and inattention, in the classroom
and to prevent the long-term negative outcomes (school drop-out, substance abuse,
criminality, suicide) associated with these behaviors.

“It is well-documented that the fidelity or quality of evidence-based interventions
diminish over time, as these interventions may be altered or discontinued altogether,”
she said. “This technology will be specifically designed to address this implementation
drift so that the beneficial treatment effects of the GBG are achieved and maintained.
Further, it will serve as a model of how technology overcomes fidelity issues when
other evidence-based programs are put into practice.”

The project will be introduced in the greater metropolitan area of Hattiesburg, Miss.,
specifically in public elementary schools across four school districts – Forrest,
Lamar, Perry and Columbia. The first year is primarily a developmental phase that
will not require participants.

In that initial phase of development, a beta version of the technology – GBG Tech,
will be developed following a rapid prototyping approach where continual feedback
is solicited from experts in the field of school-based prevention and technology-enhanced
interventions as every feature of the technology is developed by a team of high-tech
engineers. A collaborative research model will follow in Year 2 where the technology
will be refined according to feedback from relevant stakeholders and initial usability
and feasibility data will be collected. Year 3 will involve pilot testing of GBG Tech
using a Randomized Controlled Trial design to compare standard GBG and GBG Tech with
respect to teacher-level factors (e.g. self-efficacy, burnout), sustained fidelity,
classroom management and student outcomes. Randomization will occur at the school-level
after schools are matched on key demographics variables, and implementation of GBG
and GBG Tech will last for an entire academic year.

As Smith notes, “Maintaining a well-managed classroom is vital for student learning,
and it falls on the shoulders of teachers. I wanted to develop technology that would
decrease this burden and promote the use of evidence-based interventions in the classroom
as they were intended to be used.”