A few years ago, Karen Oswald and colleagues reported the results of an investigation of the use of positive behavior supports (PBS) on middle-school students’ behavior in hallways during the passing time between the last morning class and the lunch period. They worked with a team of school personnel and developed a school-wide plan based on the work of Geoff Colvin and his colleague’s Project PREPARE, which was an exemplary effort to create safe and positive learning environments developed and tested during the early 1990s. The study showed that the program the school PBS team implemented produced substantial (effect size ≈ 0.49) improvements in hallway behavior, with overall frequency of a combination of problem behaviors (running, jumping, kicking, screaming, cursing, and pushing) reduced as much as 50%.
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