Introduction to Special Issue on Tier 2 Adaptations to Behavioral Interventions: A Focus on Innovations and Recommendations

Given the rapid growth and expansion of multi-tiered interventions and supports to address behavior, educators and researchers are increasingly seeking support and innovations regarding the implementation of interventions at the more advanced tiers. While there is still a need for work related to implementation of universal or Tier 1 interventions and programs, there has been a considerable gap in relation to Tier 2 behavioral interventions more specifically. Several studies have documented significant outcomes of Tier 2 behavioral interventions on student outcomes (e.g., Check-in/Checkout; Drevon, Hixson, Wyse, & Rigney, 2019), yet there is limited research and guidance around methods for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of these interventions by adapting them to students’ needs and the contexts in which they are delivered. As a result, this special issue includes a set of original papers focused on Tier 2 behavioral interventions that move beyond typical “one size fits all” approaches to Tier 2 interventions for behavior problems and builds on a previous special issue on current issues in Tier 2 in the Journal of Applied School Psychology (Stormont & Reinke, 2013) published 6 years ago. Specifically, this special issue provides conceptual and research-based papers that describe approaches to adapting Tier 2 behavioral interventions. Building on the prior work on this topic by Stormont and Reinke (2013), we organized a special issue with the overarching goal of advancing empirical and theoretical work related to adapting Tier 2 interventions and adaptive processes within Tier 2. Specifically, this set of conceptual and research-based papers describe several practical, feasible approaches to adapting Tier 2 behavioral interventions to meet the varying needs of students requiring Tier 2 intervention, thus improving effectiveness and potentially reducing overidentification for Tier 3 supports. Toward this end, we drew upon applied research across multiple fields, including general education, special education, psychology, counseling,