A small-scale study by Clayton Cook and colleagues, published in the Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, investigated the impact of a Positive Greetings at the Door (PGD) strategy.
Ten language arts and math classrooms (from sixth to eighth grade) in two schools in the Pacific Northwest of the United States were identified that had low levels of academic engaged time (AET) and a high rate of disruptive and off-task behavior. In total, 203 students took part. A randomized block design was used to allocate the classes to intervention and control groups.
Teachers of intervention classes were provided with training sessions and follow-up coaching on a PGD strategy (greeting the students by name, reminding students individually and collectively of behaviors for success, having a structure learning activity ready, and positively recognizing on-time behavior). Teachers in the control classes were given the same amount of time to talk with other teachers about their classroom management practice. Classwide and individual student behavior was measured using the Behavioral Observation of Students in Schools (BOSS). Over two months, results showed that:
- Academic engaged time increased for the intervention group and stayed relatively constant for the control group (ES= +0.93).
- The gain in academic engaged time for intervention group corresponds to an extra 12 minutes of on-task behavior per instructional hour.
- Disruptive behavior decreased by a similar amount (ES = -0.87).
The authors caution that the small sample of teachers lessens the generalizability of the study findings, and that the study focused on classes with low baseline levels of academic engagement and classroom management practices, so a similar impact might not be seen in all classrooms.