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2009 NASP Summer Conference - Washington, DC

Full-Day Preconference Workshops

Monday, July 13, 2009
8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Neuropsychology of Emotional Disorders: Assessment and Intervention

Steven G. Feifer, DEd, NCSP, ABSNP, School Psychologist, Frederick, MD

Children with emotional disorders are the single most challenging special education population to educate successfully. This workshop will explore:

• The neural architecture of emotional behavior by examining specific biological factors related to social competence and emotional self-regulation skills.
• The neurobiological correlates of mood and anxiety disorders, psychopathology and violence.
• Neural basis of empathy and altruistic behavior.

There is compelling evidence that emotional wellness can be enhanced through early prevention efforts, appropriate assessment strategies, and an improved school climate to foster both social–emotional functioning and academic performance. Therefore, it is crucial for schools to promote character education programs, peer mediation techniques, bullying prevention methods, and conflict resolution skills. In summary, effective school performance requires successful social and emotional management through a milieu of interpersonal encounters and challenges, where frustration and anger must be tempered for the pursuit of goal attainment.

By attending this workshop, participants will learn:

• The neural architecture of emotion by detailing key brain regions responsible for the development of empathy and temperament in children.
• Specific emotional conditions from a brain–behavioral perspective, as well as discuss the relationship between learning disabilities and emotional disorders.
• The pitfalls of over relying upon behavior management plans or solely using psychopharmacology to address mental health conditions in children.
• The merits of utilizing School-Wide Positive Behavior Support systems, as well as seven key strategies to promote emotional wellness in children.

Evaluating Fidelity of Interventions and RTI Processes: Research to Practice

Jeffery P. Braden, PhD, North Carolina State University, Raleigh

As schools and districts implement RTI procedures per state and federal mandates, school psychologists often are called upon to assist in the development of intervention plans for students with a variety of academic and/or behavioral challenges. In theory, utilizing empirically supported interventions should produce improved student outcomes. But how can we know for sure? How can we know that a given intervention has been implemented the way it was designed? Although poor interventions produce poor results, many school psychologists lack the objective tools to assess intervention fidelity with regard to interventions that should work in a given situation.

This advanced-level workshop focuses on:

• Collecting student performance data in practical and time-efficient ways
• Utilizing tools to assess intervention fidelity
• Gauging the effects of interventions within an RTI framework

Participants will learn cutting edge ways to evaluate and measure the degree to which interventions are implemented at the student or classroom level. By attending this session, participants also will enhance their abilities to assess a school system’s capacity to train, support, and deliver academic and behavioral interventions with high fidelity.

School psychologists in attendance at this intensive workshop will increase their abilities to:

• Identify the legal and professional standards that assessments must meet to be used in making educational decisions related to LD, and identify ways in which those standards are most and least likely to be met in typical RTI processes
• Understand and apply current research relating RTI to students from nonstandard ethnic and language backgrounds, so that participants can recognize whether their own RTI processes are unbiased, valid, and fair for these students.

Several procedures outlined in this session come from a meta-analysis of contemporary treatment fidelity research and from two large-scale evaluations of intervention/RTI processes: Chicago’s school-based problem solving model and North Carolina’s problem solving pilot model. Participants will have hands-on practice applying research-based intervention fidelity tools to actual student cases and live observations under the guidance of a skilled leader in the field.

This workshop presents several useful strategies to enhance and document levels of intervention implementation and integrity and to evaluate the relationship between intervention integrity and individual student outcomes.