Consultant's guide for the use of time-out in the preschool and elementary classroom

✍ Scribed by Heather Sterling Turner; T. Steuart Watson

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 47 KB
• Volume: 36
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0033-3085
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6807(199903)36:2<135::aid-pits6>3.0.co;2-3

✦ Synopsis

During school-based consultation, school psychologists must often help consultees learn how to implement various behavior change strategies. One of the most effective behavior change strategies for preschool and elementary children is time-out. Although time-out has been shown to be effective for reducing a variety of problem behaviors, lack of knowledge regarding the parameters and procedures of time-out has led to its ineffective use in the classroom and low ratings of acceptability by teachers. This article provides information on the time-out research in hopes of enabling school psychologists to use, and train others to use, time-out more effectively when indicated by the data from a behavioral or functional assessment. The guide presented here may also serve as a heuristic for those wishing to conduct research on the use of time-out in the classroom.