Functional Behavioral Assessment - Ashley Brunette

Functional Behavior Assessments
By Ashley Brunette

Its fourth period, the class has just been assigned independent work. Everything seems to be going smoothly until Johnny starts acting out again. He does this every time independent work is given, he immediately begins tapping his pencil and throwing paper balls at the other students, Mrs. Johnson has about had it with Johnny and has given up. What should she do? Where does she go from here? Mrs. Johnson in desperate need of assistance would meet with a behavior intervention team to discuss possible intervention strategies to aide in Johnny’s success. The team would first begin by completing a Functional Behavior Assessment or FBA. The goal of the FBA is to determine what activities are associated with the problem behaviors and to identify the student’s preferences. (Smith, 2007) The three basic steps involved in accurately completing a FBA are to describe the behavior, uncover the function of the behavior and discuss the interventions that could be used to change that behavior. (CATIES, 2006)
In describing the problem behavior the teacher or staff member needs to use operational language. This ensures that when another teacher or staff member is observing the child they can accurately measure and identify the problem behavior for future recording. (Crone and Horner, 2003) When initially observing Johnny one would state that Johnny is rude and annoying. This type of language is emotionally driven and difficult to measure and identify. Different behaviors can be annoying and rude to different people and this fact can make things confusing. When describing his behavior for an FBA the individual should instead state that Johnny when placed in an independent work setting throws paper and makes distracting noises and refuses to do his work.
The next step is to uncover the function of the behavior. To do this the behavior intervention team must first take a look at the antecedent situation before the behavior, the behavior itself and the consequence of the behavior. (Crone and Horner, 2003) In Johnny’s case the antecedent is the independent work. He does well in groups but refuses to do his work in an independent work setting. Next the team should look at the consequence of this behavior. What happens when Johnny does this? When looking at this piece the team notes that Mrs. Johnson sends Johnny to the office when he engages in the inappropriate behavior. This information plays a valuable role in the function of the behavior. There are only two functions of behavior, to obtain or to avoid. (Crone and Horner, 2003) In this example Johnny’s behavior appears to be avoidance. He engages in the behavior to avoid doing the work and is then positively reinforced by being sent to the office and therefore escaping the work. The function is then deemed avoidance behavior and the team pursues an intervention plan.
The final step is to create an intervention plan that will result in an elimination of the behavior. (CATIES, 2006) The function of the behaviors should be the same but instead of avoiding doing the work he will have one on one instruction with the teacher to help him understand the concepts he is weakest in and help him to avoid feeling self conscious and frustrated with the work. The team could also add in the behavior plan that Mrs. Johnson needs to pair the students with buddies so that if Johnny has any questions he can ask his buddy and feel confident to work on his assignment again. The antecedent in the intervention plan will now be one on one instruction and a buddy system. The replacement behavior is Johnny working successfully on his assignment and the consequence is that he now feels confident with his skills. He now receives an intrinsic reward for completing his work.
In this scenario the teacher is overwhelmed with the problem behavior in her classroom but with the help of a behavior intervention plan and a simple FBA she now feels confident to take care of the behavior and maintain control of her classroom.

References:

CATIES (2006) FBA. http://www.tcnj.edu/~caties/FunctionalBehaviorAssessments.htm.

Crone, D, & Horner, R (2003). Building positive behavior support systems in schools. New York: Gulford

Functional behavior assessments. Retrieved June 30 , 2008, from Center for assistive technologies and inclusive education studies Web site: http://www.tcnj.edu/~caties/FunctionalBehaviorAssessments.htm

Smith, Deborah D. (2007). Introduction to special education. Boston, MA: Pearson.