{"id":33843,"date":"2011-04-26T08:09:36","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T12:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=33843"},"modified":"2023-08-29T16:09:32","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T20:09:32","slug":"going-beyond-reading-writing-and-arithmetic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/04\/going-beyond-reading-writing-and-arithmetic\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Beyond Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Sandra<\/a>
Sandra Chafouleas, professor of educational psychology, observes a third grade class at Tolland Intermediate School. Photo by Peter Morenus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a school psychologist and school administrator who specialized in working with behaviorally challenged children, Sandra Chafouleas learned firsthand that schools are held accountable not only for educating students, but also for addressing students\u2019 behavioral issues and helping them develop their social skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re well beyond the days of reading, writing and arithmetic,\u201d says Chafouleas, who joined the Department of Educational Psychology<\/a> faculty at the Neag School of Education in 2000. She notes that schools \u201chave to be able to identify problems early, and make informed decisions about what to do when these problems arise.\u201d<\/p>\n

With her distinctive professional expertise, Chafouleas is able to offer valuable insight into the field of school psychology as a professor in Neag\u2019s school psychology program. Today she works closely with students of a different age \u2013 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows whom she teaches, mentors, and guides in a diverse range of research projects in educational psychology.<\/p>\n

While her teaching skills earned her the UConn Alumni Association\u2019s Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award in 2009, Chafouleas\u2019 scholarship as a research scientist in Neag\u2019s Center for Behavioral Education and Research<\/a> has been significant as well. Publishing prolifically over the past 10 years, including more than 80 journal articles, she has been awarded nearly $3.5 million in research grants.<\/p>\n

Much of her recent work has focused on the area of behavioral assessment \u2013 an area where she, having worked alongside children with behavioral issues, saw a gap in the research.<\/p>\n

Funded by a four-year, $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Chafouleas\u2019 current research has centered in part on a rating system used by schoolteachers to monitor students\u2019 patterns of behavior in the classroom. Using the data they collect with this behavior rating system, teachers can more easily evaluate students\u2019 conduct, and provide them and their parents or other teachers with specific feedback about their behavior. With a new $2.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education coming into place, she will continue to evaluate the utility of this behavior assessment system on a larger scale over the next four years.<\/p>\n

Chafouleas and her co-investigators are working to evaluate the validity and usefulness of such behavioral assessment tools. As she explains, expanding on research in this area is essential to determine \u201chow we can build tools to communicate better across systems such as home and school, and how can we track student behavior over time in a way that is efficient and easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Developing effective behavior rating tools may not only offer reliable quantitative data about students\u2019 behavior, Chafouleas says, but also ultimately help prevent disruptions in the classroom, and improve students\u2019 academic performance as well as their behavioral and social interactions.<\/p>\n

This article was published in the Spring 2011 edition of UCONN Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Education professor Sandra Chafouleas guides research on behavioral issues in the classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2428,1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-33843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational-psychology","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 23:12:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33843"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204117,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33843\/revisions\/204117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33843"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=33843"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=33843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}