Every class has them - students who sass or space out or, in some other way, tell you they can't or won't be reached.
It's easy to accuse or blame. Easy to pack them off to the counselor's office. To rail about the disintegration of the American family.
But the fact remains, said Charles R. Greenwood, director of the KU Juniper Garden Children's Projects, that all this behavior is part of a bigger picture. Besides the student's behavior, there is what the teacher is doing, what the class activity is, and whether the class is working together or broken up into smaller groups.
More goes on than any one person can register, Greenwood said. Yet an outside observer, such as the school psychologist, can help.
To impose a discipline on those observations, the psychologist can now use a laptop computer containing software designed by Greenwood and his colleagues.
The software helps the psychologist silently tabulate, every 15 seconds, the teacher's behavior, the student's behavior, the activity of the moment, the teaching materials at hand and the configuration of the class - students working alone, one on one, in small groups. The psychologist typically does this logging for 30 minutes.
Greenwood said that 13 Kansas school districts now have copies of the software, called EBASS, or Ecobehavioral Assessment Software System. Six school districts in other states, from California to New York, and three in foreign countries also use the software.
The districts are using EBASS as a basis for referrals of kids to special-education programs and for consultations with teachers, Greenwood said.
EBASS also can be used to assess new programs. If a district were experimenting with peer tutoring - where kids teach kids - they might use an EBASS evaluation to compare the students' engagement during tutoring with their engagement in more conventionally structured classes.
EBASS is an example of technology transfer, Greenwood said. He and his colleagues originally developed the software to do their own research observations.
Greenwood said he hoped more Kansas school districts would use the software. Juniper Gardens is training school psychologists in its use and is also getting some universities to adopt the software in its preparation of school psychologists.
How about the downside?
"Everything can go wrong," Greenwood said. "People can take this and, in the worst case, use it to evaluate teachers under review. It requires having notebook computers, and that requires funds. "But if it's used in a positive way, by people who understand it, then it's a helpful system."