Comparison of Four Classroom-Based Strategies for Middle School Students With ADHD: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Middle school students with ADHD often experience negative academic outcomes. To intervene, schools frequently provide services through special education or section 504. These services include strategies, such as breaks, prompting, and sensory proprioception to remove the impact of construct-irrelevant variance. Student plans rarely include strategies, such as selfmanagement, designed to teach students skills to increase independent functioning. The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of four strategies on engagement, disruptive behavior, and time to initiate tasks. Fifteen sixth and seventh grade students were randomized daily to one of four conditions. Results indicated large statistically significant differences. Social validity data indicated that students found prompting and self-management helpful, but preferred breaks and sensory proprioception. This study builds on a growing empirical base that supports the prioritization of strategies to teach skills over strategies to remove the impact of ADHD on performance.

Competency-Based Program for Delivering Child Mental Health Training

“…There is supporting evidence regarding positive results brought about by personalized educational interventions led by qualified professionals targeted for children. It is possible to do a more targeted assessment of needs, goal-setting, and intervention planning in individual sessions than in group-based approaches, thus allowing for better handling of specific mental health needs 5 . Positive mental health outcomes among the children are attributed to the statistically proven effectiveness of competency-based interventions in promoting key competencies including self awareness, self management, student decision making, interpersonal skills and social awareness 6 .…”

Using Interventions to Increase Test Access: An Alternative to Accommodations?

“…More generally, a combined package of interventions and accommodations is likely appropriate for certain students with disabilities. We contrast the two types of supports in part to help readers rethink a common impulse to provide accommodations immediately and neglect interventions (see Harrison et al, 2022, for more discussion on this point).…”

Self-management training vs. neurofeedback interventions for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Results of a randomized controlled treatment study

“…There is thus good evidence that parent training interventions and psychoeducation may improve QoL of children with ADHD (50-52). However, evaluations of interventions directly addressing self-management are currently rare; most of these studies dwell on ADHD core symptoms as primary outcomes, often ignoring QoL and self-concept (53)(54)(55). One of the few RCTs on neurofeedback (NF) identified impaired QoL in children with ADHD that failed to improve significantly after NF or biofeedback interventions (56), a finding in line with a less controlled study on NF of activity in the prefrontal cortex measured via near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) (57).…”