Promoting Positive Behavior via Film

From elementary schoolers singing about bathroom etiquette to high school teachers recognizing students who inspire them, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) videos are changing the way students learn and behave in school. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports is a proactive and respectful approach to supporting and including all students in a school or community. Videos explaining PBIS concepts in an entertaining and instructional format are increasingly popular in K–12 schools. The Developing an Online Platform for Positive Behavior Supports Creative Inquiry project, led by Dr. Shanna Hirsch from the Department of Education and Human Development, is interested in studying and promoting this video trend. Through their involvement with the PBIS Film Festival, Creative Inquiry students hope to learn more about these videos and to make them more accessible to schools.

The PBIS Film Festival, which takes place at the annual Association for Positive Behavior Support Conference, features PBIS videos made by schools or school districts. These videos encourage positive behaviors, often in engaging ways meant to captivate student interest. Hirsch, in collaboration with faculty from the University of Florida and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, organize the film festival. However, they hope to shift the leadership responsibilities to the Creative Inquiry team. “We hope to make it student– sustained in the future, with the students in the Creative Inquiry as the leaders of the transition,” Hirsch said.

The first phase of the Creative Inquiry project included conducting a qualitative research study, to better understand the film production and dissemination process. The team interviewed 16 film producers to gain insight into the development of creating and using films. After learning more about the films and their creators, the students took on an important role in the PBIS Film Festival — collecting and curating video submissions for the festival. The students worked with a national panel of experts to screen and code each film in preparation for the event. They are assembling a catalog of videos from the past four years on a website in order to make them more accessible to the public. No such database exists for PBIS videos.

Films are submitted from all over the world and often require a great deal of time to produce. Because of the time and resources needed to create an effective PBIS film, schools may struggle to produce multiple films. The resource website will help schools share their videos as well as scripts for films. Through collaboration with different majors and disciplines, the team hopes to bring the positive messages in PBIS videos to more students and educators around the world