Chapter 12

Chapter 12 – Responding to Student Behavior

What are positive behavioral interventions and supports?

·         Clearly defined outcomes

·         Behavioral and biomedical science

·         Practices demonstrated effective through research

·         Systematic approaches that enhances the learning environment and outcomes for all students

How can you use positive behavior supports to prevent discipline problems?

·         Instructional environments conductive to learning

o   Be specific and stated using positive wording

o   Be posted and discussed with students early in the school year

o   Be rehearsed while students learn them

o   Be enforced consistently

·         Effective classroom communication

o   Teachers who treat their students with respect and trust are more successful than other teachers in creating a positive classroom environment in which fewer behavior problems occur

o   Use nonverbal signals instead of in addition to verbal communication to facilitate understanding

o   Write positive comments on papers to show appreciation for students’ strengths

·         Effective teaching methods

o   Provide instruction that is relevant, interesting, individualized, and active

How can you promote positive group behavior?

·         Token economy

o   Identify the behaviors for which students can earn credit

o   Decide on class currency

o   Assign a value to each target behavior

o   Decide on the privileges or rewards can earn

o   Assign purchase prices to the privileges or rewards

o   Explain the economy to students

o   Establish a systematic way for students to exchange their currency for privileges or rewards

·         Other peer-meditated approaches

o   Focus is on the relationships among students’ background an experiences, the learning environment, the materials used in teaching, and the activities in which students engage

o   Highly recommended as a strategy for promoting positive behavior for students from racially and culturally diverse backgrounds

What are positive behavior strategies for responding to minor individual behaviors?

·         Use minimum interventions

o   “Catch ‘em being good”

o   Make high probability requests first

o   Use grouping strategies

·         Manage students’ surface behaviors

o   Ignore minor incidents and use humor to defuse tense classroom situations

o   Sometimes responding to students’ surface behaviors sometimes can have the effecting of increasing them

How can functional behavior assessment and behavior intervention plans help you respond to serious individual behaviors?

o   Functional behavior assessment (FBA) – a problem-solving process implemented for any student with a disability who has a chronic, a serious behavior problems

·         Rationale for functional behavior assessment

o   Functions of behavior include avoiding something or obtaining something

o   Possible functions – power/control, protection/escape, attention, acceptance/affiliation, self-expression, gratification, justice/revenge

·         Steps for FBA

o   Verifying the seriousness of the problem

o   Defining the problem behavior in concrete terms

o   Collecting data to better understand the behavior

o   Analyzing the data and forming hypotheses about function

o   Developing a behavior intervention plan (BIP)

o   Implementing the plan and gathering data on its impact on the behavior

o   Monitoring intervention effectiveness and proceeding to appropriate next actions

What are effective strategies for responding to serious individual behaviors?

·         Increasing desirable behaviors

o   Reinforcement

§  Positive – responding to a behavior with a consequence that makes it more likely for the behavior to occur again

§  Negative – any increase in behavior to avoid a consequence

o   Types of Reinforcers

§  Social – positive phone calls to parents, pat on the back, verbal praise, selection as Citizen of the Month

§  Activity – playing games, having extra recess, helping a teacher in another class, and participating in other coveted individual or group pastimes.

§  Tangible – prizes or other objects that students can earn as symbols of achievement and that students want to obtain

§  Primary – foods and other items related to human needs that a student finds rewarding

o   Effective use of Positive Reinforcers

§  Make sure that the positive reinforcers are clear an specific and that students understand the relationship between their behavior and rewards

§  Vary how much and how often you reward students

§  Make sure a student desires the reward selected

·         Decreasing undesirable behaviors

o   Differential reinforcement of behaviors that are incompatible with the undesirable behavior

o   Extinction, or ignoring the behavior until the student stops it

o   Removing something desirable from the student

o   Presenting a negative or aversive consequence

·         Using behavior contracts

o   An agreement between the teacher and students that clearly specifies the expectations for the student, the rewards for meeting those expectations for the students, the rewards for meeting those expectations, the consequences of not meeting them, and the timeframe for which the agreement is valid

How can you help students manage their own behavior?

·         Cognitive behavior management strategies

o   Cognitive behavior management (CBM) – students are taught to monitor their own behavior, make judgments about its appropriateness, and change it as needed

o   Self-monitoring – students learn to monitor and record their own behavior

o   Self-reinforcement – students self-evaluate and then judge whether they have earned a reward

·         Teaching cognitive behavior management strategies

o   Discuss the strategy with the student and present a rationale for its use

o   Model for the student what you expect

o   Provide practice and feedback

Outside Resources
PBIS	http://pbis.org/main.htm
Wrightslaw website – behavior problems and discipline	www.wrightslaw.com/info/discipl.index.htm
MyEducationLab	www.myeducationlab.com